Did Kimberly Murray write the 94 TRC Calls to Action?

Kimberly Murray - Image by Yugo Takahashi

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By Nina Green

In her affidavit requesting intervenor status in the Mohawk Mothers lawsuit, Kimberly Murray took full credit for the writing and editing of the 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Since she has claimed credit for the TRC report, it seems likely Kimberly Murray also authored the TRC's 94 Calls To Action which have already fundamentally transformed Canada with the passage of UNDRIP, and if fully implemented will cost hard-working Canadian taxpayers untold billions of dollars.

Since the TRC was itself part of the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement which cost Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars, one might well wonder whether the 94 Calls To Action actually constitute a fundamental breach of that Settlement Agreement. When Canadian taxpayers paid out billions under the 2006 IRS Settlement Agreement, they did not authorize the TRC to create 94 Calls To Action insisting that they pay out billions more.

Since Kimberly Murray's 2015 TRC report and the 94 Calls To Action will fundamentally transform Canada forever and cost Canadian taxpayers untold billions, Canadians have a right to know who Kimberly Murray is.

But it seems Canadians don't have any idea who she is, largely because Kimberly Murray has not been forthcoming about her family background, which can only be pieced together from individual snippets of information she has let slip in interviews she has given over the years.

The federal government website announcing her appointment as Special Interlocutor states that 'Kimberly Murray is a member of the Kahnesatake Mohawk Nation'.

However at a meeting of the Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples on 27 November 2024, Murray did not assert membership in the Kahnesatake Mohawk Nation, but merely stated 'I am Mohawk of Kanesatake'.

Similarly, in the only known interview in which she has revealed the name of her father and paternal grandparents, Kimberly Murray did not assert membership in the Kanesatake Mohawk Nation, but merely mentioned 'ties' to Kanesatake:

“This is a massive responsibility and obviously thinking about how to get this done and wanting to connect and communicate with as many people as I can in the two years,” said Murray, who has ties to Kanesatake; her father is Ronald Murray and her grandparents’ Rene and Ruby Murray.

A record of the marriage of Rene and Ruby Murray on 5 October 1940 at St Patrick's Church in Montreal can be found on Ancestry.com. In it, the Reverend Francis T. Moyle states [bolding added]:

. . . Joseph Rene Ovilda Murray, hotel man of Saint Patricks, son of age of the late Alfred Murray and the late Diana Roger of the one part and Ruby Elizabeth McWhirter, a non Catholic of Montreal, daughter of age of Gordon McWhirter and Ella Pollack of the other part, [were married] according to the laws and rites of the Holy Catholic Church in presence of Alpha Major step-father of the bridegroom and Bernard Murphy, both undersigned with the bridegroom and the bride. . . .

The record of her grandparents' marriage is significant in view of a strange story Kimberly Murray recounted to Canadian Geographic concerning her paternal grandfather, Rene Murray, in a 28 September 2022 interview:

I’m Mohawk and a member of the Kanesatake, the Mohawk community on Lake of Two Mountains outside of Montreal, which is unfortunately mostly known as Oka, and my grandfather was actually taken by the Jesuits. He wasn’t taken to an Indian residential school, he was taken to an orphanage, and had a very similar experience in that regard with abuse.

Kimberly Murray provided no evidence in support of this strange tale, and Canada census records appear to contradict her claim that her grandfather, Rene Murray, was taken to an orphanage by the Jesuits.

Rene Murray's biological father, Alfred Murray, died in 1917, and Rene's mother, Diana Major, quickly remarried. As noted above, her second husband was Alphonse/Alpha Major, who, as Rene's stepfather, was a witness to Rene's 1940 marriage.

Census records show Rene Murray living, not in an orphanage, but with his mother Diana and her second husband, Alpha Major.

The 1911 census shows Kimberly Murray's great-grandparents, Alfred Murray, a 34-year-old baker described in the census as 'Ecossais' [Scottish], and his 25-year-old French wife, Diana Roger, living in the Jacques-Cartier district of Montreal. The 1921 census shows Kimberly Murray's grandfather, Rene, 7 years old and using his stepfather's surname (mistranscribed as 'Romi Mager'), living in Verdun with his mother, Diana Roger, and her second husband, Alphonse Major. The 1931 census shows Kimberly Murray's grandfather, Rene, 16 years old and described in the census as 'Francais' [French], still living with his mother, Diana Roger, and her second husband, Alpha Major, and still using the name of his stepfather as his surname, i.e. Rene Major.

There thus appears to be no evidence in support of Kimberly Murray's claim that her paternal grandfather, Rene Murray, was taken by the Jesuits to an orphanage. Her paternal grandfather continued to live with his mother, her second husband, and his siblings, after his biological father's death.

A story Kimberly Murray related about her mother in an interview with Pam Palmater appears to be equally unsupported. Murray told Palmater that her mother came to Canada as a pre-teen immigrant 'settler from Belfast, Ireland':

I grew up in, just on the outskirts of Montreal, in different suburbs of Montreal. And my father is Mohawk, and my mother is a settler from Belfast, Ireland. She came over to Canada when she was a young teenager, or a young girl, actually, I think she wasn't a teenager yet when she came over.

Records available online suggest that Kimberly Murray is mistaken, and that her mother was not an immigrant from Belfast who came to Canada as a pre-teenager. A Canadian Steamship Company passenger list from 1957 shows that 10-year-old Sarah Lyttle and her 41-year-old mother Evelyn Lyttle, both of 1036 Stephens in Verdun, were returning Canadian citizens, not immigrants from Belfast. As well, the 26 September 1964 record of the marriage of Kimberly Murray's parents, Ronald Albert Murray and Sarah Lyttle, in the Anjou United Church states that Kimberly Murray's mother, Sarah Lyttle, was a Canadian citizen born in Quebec. See Quebec Marriage Returns, 1926-1997 at MyHeritage.

Evelyn Lyttle's obituary in the 22 October 2004 issue of the Montreal Gazette mentions her children Robert and Sally [Sarah], and her four grandchildren, Ronnie, Kimberly, Billy and Erin.

Kimberly Murray herself admits she didn't grow up at Kanesatake, and didn't identify as Indigenous until university, possibly until the Oka crisis in the summer of 1990, as recounted in the February 2011 issue of the York University magazine, Inside YorkU:

Kimberly Murray didn't grow up on the reserve. Blond and blue-eyed, the daughter of an Irish immigrant and a Kanesatake Mohawk, she spent her childhood in a Montreal suburb. In winter, she skied in Quebec, in summer, she spent time in California, where her hotel-accountant father had sought a new life after divorce. If her grandfather from Oka hadn't drummed into her, "You are an Indian. Don't ever forget it," she might have ended up like her younger brother - uninformed about her native heritage. . . .

Since high school, Murray has had an abiding interest in law and political science. In university, she began to actively identify as a First Nations person. She started law school in 1990 following the 78-day Oka standoff between Mohawks and security forces in Quebec. "I got in many fights over it. People didn't know I was a member of the band. It really fired me up."

In sum, Kimberly Murray did not grow up on a reserve, did not identify as Indigenous until university, has no Indigenous background on her Irish mother's side, and no identifiable Mohawk background on her father's side in historical records as far back as her great-grandparents.

What are Canadians to make, then, of the federal government's claim on its official website that 'Kimberly Murray is a member of the Kahnesatake Mohawk Nation'? Minister of Justice Arif Virani, to whom Kimberly Murray was appointed by Order in Council as a Special Adviser, should explain that claim to Canadians, and provide the evidence which supports it.

Kimberly Murray's family background would not be of the slightest interest to Canadians were it not for the fact that as Executive Director of the TRC, where she claims credit for authoring the TRC report and likely authored the 94 Calls To Action, Kimberly Murray has had tremendous influence in shaping Canada to her own personal vision. And in her final report to Minister of Justice Arif Virani, Murray has taken personal activism to the next level by sending her report to the International Criminal Court with a view to having federal government and Catholic church officials prosecuted for crimes against humanity, as she matter-of-factly told the Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples on 27 November 2024. Under what authority a federal civil servant whose salary is paid by Canadian taxpayers can refer the prosecution of Canadians to the International Criminal Court is unknown. Equally unknown is who Kimberly Murray suggested to the ICC should be criminally prosecuted. If, as Kimberly Murray asserts, the crime against humanity is an ongoing one, Prime Minister Trudeau and Justice Minister Arif Virani, as well as Catholic Bishops and Pope Francis, would be logical targets for prosecution by the ICC, as would all Senators and Members of Parliament, as well as countless other Canadians who have, according to Murray, kept the truth hidden.

Although Kimberly Murray asserts that federal government and Catholic church officials have kept the truth hidden, and thus committed a crime against humanity, it is Kimberly Murray herself who has kept the truth hidden. Although she repeatedly claims there are thousands of 'missing' and 'disappeared' Indian residential school children, in all her years from 2010 to the present day working for the TRC and as Special Interlocutor, and in all her voluminous reports, Kimberly Murray has not produced the name of a single verifiably missing or disappeared child. Not one. And this is perhaps not surprising. If someone cannot keep her own family history straight, and claims her grandfather was taken to an orphanage and her mother was a pre-teen settler immigrant from Belfast, neither of which appears to be supported by historical records, can one rely on her when she claims there are thousands of 'missing' and 'disappeared' Indian residential school children? Should someone whose accounts of her own family history don't appear to check out be allowed to shape the future of Canada, and to cost taxpayers billions of dollars?

Circling back to the point raised at the beginning of this email, if Kimberly Murray authored the 94 Calls To Action to shape Canada, at the cost of billions of dollars, to her own personal vision of what the country should be, would it not be prudent to hit the pause button on implementing those 94 Calls To Action until Kimberly Murray and the federal government produce evidence of at least one verifiably 'missing' or 'disappeared' Indian residential school child whose parents didn't know what had happened to their child?

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Is Kimberly Murray responsible for the false claim that there are thousands of missing Indian residential school children?

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