Challenging Murray Sinclair on the Residential School Narrative

James McCrae stands by his criticism of indigenous narratives in Canada

James McCrae

“If we aren’t going to be honest about the truth, the truth will eventually bite us. However, if we’re honest, the facts could very well set everyone free.” - James McCrae   

By

James Pew

James McCrae is a former Manitoba attorney general, he was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1986 to 1999, in the Progressive Conservative Party caucus. From 1988 to 1999, James was a cabinet minister in the government of Premier Gary Filmon, and from 2006 to 2013 he was an elected councillor for the City of Brandon. In May of 2013, he was named a part-time Citizenship Judge for Winnipeg, where he served for several years before accepting the chair position of Manitoba’s Social Services Appeal Board (SSAB), an administrative tribunal that deals primarily with appeals concerning social assistance hearings (many involving indigenous people). 

On May 10, 2023, after six years as chairperson for the SSAB, James’ term expired, he then accepted a new appointment to the King’s Bench Masters Selection Advisory Committee (KBMSAC).  For some reason, in spite of all the years of fruitful loyal service to his province, his most recent appointment sparked outrage from political opponents and resulted in his walking away from the position not “wishing to be the source of any pain or bad feelings.” 

An ungracious and grossly disrespectful end to the career of an exemplary Canadian who, in a more sensible age, would have been celebrated as a model politician, public servant and citizen. The cause of this outrageous injustice is as much a product of a chain of events, as the defining race essentialist feature of our modern cultural condition. To be blunt, James McCrae is a white man who has published writings on indigenous issues and has dared to discuss evidence and facts that disagree with claims made by indigenous activists. In 2023, the veracity of James’ claims, or the care in which he delivers them, mean nothing. When a white man disagrees with an indigenous person or any “person of colour,” we have been conditioned to react as if this “punching down” could only be from a place of racism and malicious intent. 

The generation of the woke social justice cult can see nothing other than racial antipathy when a white person engages with issues concerning visible minorities in any fashion outside the established boundaries of acceptability. The racism taboo now precludes white people from doing anything other than apologizing for existing to people of colour, who we are told are traumatized by our mere presence. If that is the case, then it must be that James McCrae’s presence in the Manitoba government was only tolerated because his critical views on indigenous issues were not known. Or, they were known, but something about the last couple of years, since international headlines falsely claimed a mass grave of murdered children had been discovered in Kamloops, B.C., has vastly altered the Overton window of acceptable discourse concerning indigenous issues. 

Further, the addition of intersectional considerations seems to apply to this moment, and to the recent circumstances faced by James McCrae. That is, it matters most that James is white, the Overton window on indigenous issues opens differently for white people. Was James confused about his racial profile, and of the position it occupies on the intersectional hierarchy in June of 2022 when he published an op-ed, that apparently caused his recent trouble, on indigenous issues for the Frontier Centre of Public Policy, called Yes, It Is Indeed Time To Move On? 

Full disclosure, I co-authored one of the pieces critical of indigenous issues that presumably has led to the controversy over James’ KBMSAC appointment. James and I, with Nina Green, wrote Seeking the Truth About Residential Schools  for the trusty Dorchester Review, who was brave enough to publish it back in September of 2022 - at the time, I had no idea my co-writer was soon to become so infamous!

Last week, in an op-ed for True North concerning the controversy over his resignation, James pushed yet again on the Overton window when he was bold enough to bring up the fact that the Indian Residential School death registry maintained by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, includes Betty Osborne, an indigenous girl who was tragically murdered in circumstances unrelated to Indian Residential Schools. In fact, even more than a year after the NCTR was informed that Betty Osborne’s provincial death record had been found and makes clear the truth of her unfortunate fate, the NCTR still has not removed her name, or any other names of children who have been included in error.

It doesn't matter that Betty Osborne’s death had absolutely nothing to do with Indian Residential Schools. What does is that certain influential indigenous leaders want us all to believe that she was murder by the Catholic priests and nuns who ran the schools. How else will they justify the endless supply of forever expanding compensation and reparations for historical wrongs unless those wrongs can be exaggerated to the point where all Canadians believe that it was in the very nature of white Christian settler populations to inflict the most horrendous and genocidal abuse onto indigenous peoples they felt were unworthy of human rights and utterly inferior? 

And so it was that James McCrae, in his intersectional insensitivity to the ongoing genocidal oppression that corrupt indigenous leaders say exists, was doubly punching down when he pointed out that the former commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair, made false claims to the United Nations in 2010 when his address included the line,  “nearly every Indigenous child in Canada” was forced to attend an Indian Residential School.  The truth being that approximately ⅙ of indigenous children attended an Indian Residential School. James even went as far as to point out a second false claim, the one made on CBC in June of 2021 when Sinclair said the number of children who died as a result of their school experience “could be in the 15,000 to 25,000 range, and maybe even more.”  

Which brings us to the latest development, on Saturday June 10th, the defiant and scrappy James McCrae sent out a press release to Canadian media with the headline “MCCRAE CHALLENGES SINCLAIR ON RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS NARRATIVE.”

Here is the full press release:

Former Manitoba attorney general Jim McCrae today challenged former Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Murray Sinclair to explain statements Sinclair made before and after the completion of his work on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

“Everyone’s understanding following the work of the TRC and the Kamloops announcement in May 2021 has been heavily influenced by erroneous and unchallenged statements made by Mr. Sinclair,” McCrae said.

Speaking for Canada on April 27, 2010, Sinclair told the United Nations that “for roughly seven generations nearly every Indigenous child in Canada” was “forced” to attend a residential school.

Both parts of the statement are dead wrong. At its peak, about a third of status Indian children attended the schools (1929-1940), and far fewer during those periods before and after. Of all Indigenous children (including non-status, Inuit, Metis), only approximately one-sixth attended, almost all voluntarily, for an average of 4.5 years.

Six days after the Kamloops “unmarked graves” announcement May 27, 2021, Sinclair stated that it could be that “15,000-25,000, and maybe even more” Indigenous children died as a result of their residential school experience. Nowhere is there evidence validating this number, and plenty of evidence that there were few deaths of registered students at the schools, or because of their school experience.

McCrae said, “This country has been plunged into years of anguish for Indigenous people, and extreme guilt on the part of non-Indigenous Canadians. With his unfounded and appalling statements Mr. Sinclair has made the situation far worse than the facts justify.

“People believe Murray Sinclair, but no one has demanded he demonstrate the facts underlying his bald and reckless assertions. Indigenous Canadians deserve much better.”

McCrae concluded, “I challenge Mr. Sinclair to join me and a camera in a television studio, to repeat his statements, and to subject himself and his statements to the scrutiny Indigenous people deserve. All Canadians deserve at least that.”

It’s on.

Well, it’s actually not on, and not likely to be. Murray Sinclair will have to accept the challenge. Something I doubt he is brave enough to do. His claims are fantastic and indefensible, Murray Sinclair has no choice but to run and hide. History will remember him as the disingenuous actor  he is, but for now, the goal is to spread the word about the challenge that James McCrae has put forward. Let’s make widely known the corruption of Murray Sinclair and the other neo-tribal elites involved in the undeserved appropriation of Canadian taxpayer funds that would be better spent on services to improve conditions for the poor indigenous people whom many leaders, like Sinclair, care nothing about.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, In 1959 Indigenous Leaders Wished To Expand The Indian Residential School System

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