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.
SARA SINCLAIR is an oral historian of Cree-Ojibwa and mixed settler descent. Sara teaches in the Oral History Master of Arts Program at Columbia University. She is Project Director of the Aryeh Neier Oral History Project at Columbia Center for Oral History Research [CCOHR]. Sara recently edited the memoir of former Canadian Senator and Chief Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Murray Sinclair (McClelland & Stewart 2024). With Stephanie Sinclair she is co-editing two anthologies of Indigenous letters, for Penguin/Random House Canada. She is the editor of How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America (2020, Voice of Witness/Haymarket Books). She has contributed to the Columbia Center for Oral History Research’s Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, Obama Presidency Oral History, and Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project. With Peter Bearman and Mary Marshall Clark, Sinclair edited Robert Rauschenberg: An Oral History (2019, Columbia University Press). Sara’s current and previous clients include the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of the City of New York and New York City Department of Environmental Protection. She has been an invited speaker at Berkeley College, Bard College, Haverford College, Brooklyn College, Cooper Union & Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (UPPA), France among others. Sara holds an M.A. in Oral History from Columbia University. Visit saraesinclair.com
