Why did Murray Sinclair include in the TRC report Doris Young's bizarre account of a 'murder' at the Elkhorn Indian Residential School?
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By Nina Green
There is only one account of an alleged murder at an Indian residential school in the entire report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
That account is by Doris Young, who claimed she witnessed the murder of a fellow student at the Anglican-run Elkhorn Indian Residential School which closed in 1949. The Final TRC report quotes Doris Young as saying:
I remember was, there was all these screams, and there was blood over the, the
walls. [Crying]… and we were told that if we, if we were, if we ever told, or tried
to run away, we would, the same thing would happen to us. [Crying] So, it was
a dangerous time for, for children, and for me at that, those days. [Crying] We
never really knew who would be next to be murdered because we witnessed one
already. [Crying]
The TRC report continues:
Young struggled with this memory and “had nightmares for years.” She eventually
reported the incident to the police as an adult:
The RCMP investigated, they said they couldn’t find anything. They came back
and told me that they found no evidence of what I was talking about, and but it
was not something that I would make up. The thing about all of this violence that
happened in those schools is that they had such free access to us, and there was
no one there to protect us. They, they had absolute authority over all the violence
they committed on, on me, and, and who, all the other children that were there
as well.
So who is Doris Young, and why did Murray Sinclair include her account of a murder that never happened in the final TRC report?
According to a CBC article dated 10 April 2016, Doris Young is one of 15 children of John Young, a trapper from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation near The Pas, Manitoba.
Doris was born in 1941, and attended residential school from the ages of 3 to 16. Under the Indian Act, status Indian children were not eligible for admission to Indian residential schools until they were seven years of age. It is thus obvious that Doris was admitted to the Elkhorn school at the age of three for charitable reasons because her parents, John Young and Elizabeth Bignell, could not care for or support all the children in their large family.
Since Doris was admitted to the Elkhorn school at the age of three in 1944, and the school closed in 1949 when she was eight, she could only have witnessed the alleged 'murder' as a very young child, an important point omitted in the TRC account. As noted earlier, as an adult Doris had the RCMP investigate her claim. The RCMP found no evidence of a murder ever having been committed at the school.
That should have been the end of the matter. Instead, Murray Sinclair allowed Doris Young's lurid account to become part of the official TRC record.
Why did he do that?
It may have happened because Murray Sinclair and Doris Young are 'family'. Doris Young is the maternal grandmother of Sarah Sinclair, the daughter of Murray Sinclair's son, Niigaan Sinclair, and his partner, Lorena Fontaine, niece of former AFN National Chief Phil Fontaine. As Lena Fontaine recounts in a video she made in 2012, her daughter Sarah Sinclair's birth took place in Doris Young's home in Opaskwayak.
It thus seems that Doris Young's account of a murder that never happened was included in the official TRC report because she and Murray Sinclair are related to each other through their granddaughter, Sarah Sinclair. Doris Young is Sarah Sinclair's maternal grandmother, and Murray Sinclair is Sarah Sinclair's paternal grandfather.
Should Murray Sinclair have made full disclosure of his family relationship to Doris Young when he included her account of a non-existent murder in the TRC report?
If he was going to include Doris Young's tale in the TRC report, of course Murray Sinclair should have disclosed that they were related. Canadians had a right to know that Murray Sinclair was putting forward as a purportedly reliable account of a murder at an Indian residential school the flawed childhood memory of a member of his own family circle.
But Murray Sinclair would obviously have exercised better judgment had he left Doris Young's tale out of the official TRC report entirely. There are no missing Indian residential school children. Not a single name of a verifiably missing Indian residential school child has ever been provided to the Canadian public. And of course if there are no missing Indian residential school children, then by definition there are no murdered Indian residential school children.
Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Should Leah Gazan be the first person to be criminally charged under her private member's Bill C-413?
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Thanks Nina, you have brightened my morning with another gem of insight into this ongoing nightmare. In death, Murray Sinclair's status as a prominent indigenous Canadian has grown disproportionately to reality, due, in no small part, to all the undeserved accolades bestowed upon him by a visually impaired press and sycophantic politicians. Murray's place among the mythical gods of Mt Olympus has been irrevocably obtained, in perpetuity, due to his uncanny and unrestrained ability for story telling. Story telling, in fact, is an integral part of indigenous culture, where improvisation, theatrics or embellishment enhance the stage craft and entertainment value of the narrative. In fairness, I think both Murray Sinclair and Doris Young were just following the time honored advice of Mark Twain who once said, "if you are going to tell a story, make sure its a good one", and the Elkhorn Res School murder story is certainly a, "LOLLAPALOOZA".
All things considered, I trust virtually nothing Murray has said.