Who We Are: Inspired by the Words and Wisdom of Murray Sinclair (Niigaan Sinclair & Tanya Talaga)

Who We Are: Inspired by the Words and Wisdom of Murray Sinclair is a live recording of the launch of The Honourable Murray Sinclair's Who We Are: Four Questions For a Life and a Nation featuring Stephanie Sinclair of McClelland & Stewart, co-author, Niigaan Sinclair, and special guest Tanya Talaga, with a special recording of Senator Sinclair reading from his memoir. This event took place on Thursday September 26 at the RBC Convention Centre (Winnipeg).
Judge, senator, and activist. Father, grandfather, and friend. This is Murray Sinclair's story--and the story of a nation--in his own words, an oral history that forgoes the trappings of the traditionally written memoir to center Indigenous ways of knowledge and storytelling. As Canada moves forward into the future of Reconciliation, one of its greatest leaders guides us to ask the most important and difficult question we can ask of ourselves: Who are we?
Senator Murray Sinclair was a judge for twenty-eight years. He was the first Indigenous judge appointed in Manitoba and Canada's second. He served as Co-Chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba and as Chief Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). As head of the TRC, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada, culminating in the issuance of the TRC's report in 2015. He served as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Manitoba and has won numerous awards, including the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, the Manitoba Bar Association's Equality Award (2001) and its Distinguished Service Award (2016), and has received Honorary Doctorates from 14 Canadian universities. Senator Sinclair was appointed to the Senate on April 2, 2016.
Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair is Anishinaabe (St. Peter’s/Little Peguis) and an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba. He is a regular commentator on Indigenous issues on CTV, CBC, and APTN, and his written work can be found in the pages of The Exile Book of Native Canadian Fiction and Drama, newspapers like The Guardian, and online with CBC Books: Canada Writes. Niigaan is the co-editor of the award-winning Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water (HighWater Press) and Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories (Michigan State University Press), and is the Editorial Director of The Debwe Series with Portage and Main Press. Niigan obtained his BA in Education at the University of Winnipeg, before completing an MA in Native- and African-American literatures at the University of Oklahoma, and a PhD in First Nations and American Literatures from the University of British Columbia. His most recent book, Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre (McClelland & Stewart), was published earlier this year.
Tanya Talaga is of Anishinaabe and Polish descent and was born and raised in Toronto. She is a member of Fort William First Nation. Her mother was raised on the traditional territory of Fort William First Nation and Treaty 9. She is the acclaimed author of the national bestseller Seven Fallen Feathers, which won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult Award. A finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, the novel was also CBC’s Nonfiction Book of the Year and a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. Talaga was the 2017-2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy and the 2018 CBC Massey Lecturer. She is also the author of the national bestseller All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward and the newly published book The Knowing. For more than twenty years she was a journalist at the Toronto Star and is now a regular columnist at the Globe and Mail. Tanya Talaga is the founder of Makwa Creative, a production company formed to elevate Indigenous voices and stories.