Who We Are: Inspired by the Words and Wisdom of Murray Sinclair (Tickets Required)
Thursday Sep 26 2024 7:00 pm, Winnipeg, The RBC Convention Centre
Murray Sinclair is currently in hospital undergoing treatment, and regrettably cannot participate in this event. While we, McClelland & Stewart, and Senator Sinclair are saddened he is unable to attend, we are hopeful you’ll join us in ensuring the stories, ideas, and inspiration contained in his new book, Who We Are: Four Questions For a Life and a Nation, are shared and celebrated.
McNally Robinson is pleased to present Who We Are: Inspired by the Words and Wisdom of Murray Sinclair featuring Niigaan Sinclair and Tanya Talaga, with a special recording of Murray reading from his memoir.
This is an offsite event that will take place in the City Room/Hall C at the RBC Convention Centre Winnipeg at 375 York Avenue. Tickets are on sale NOW. CLICK HERE. This event will NOT be streamed on our YouTube channel. Please note that the RBC Convention Centre is simply the venue for this event and should not receive any inquiries. Call the store at 204-475-0483 if you have any questions.
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.
See:
Who We Are
- Murray Sinclair 
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Hardcover
$39.95
Reader Reward Price: $35.96
Named a Book to Read This Fall by CBC Books and the Toronto Star o One of Indigo's Most Anticipated Books
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?
For decades, Senator Sinclair has fearlessly educated Canadians about the painful truths of our history. He was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba, and only the second Indigenous judge in Canadian history. He was the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and remains one of the foremost voices on Reconciliation. And now, for the first time, he shares his full story--and his full vision for our nation--with readers across Canada and beyond.
Drawing on Senator Sinclair's perspectives regarding Indigenous identity, human rights, and justice, Who We Are examines the roles of history, resistance, and resilience in the pursuit of finding a path forward, one that heals the damaged relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. In doing so, it reveals Senator Sinclair's life in a new and direct way, exploring how all of these unique experiences have shaped him as an Anishinaabe man, father, and grandfather.
Structured around the four questions that have long shaped Senator Sinclair's thinking and worldview--Where do I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I?--Who We Are takes readers into the story of his remarkable life as never before, while challenging them to embrace an inclusive vision for our shared future.
The book includes the What We Have Learned report, created by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC).
