Change called for in Aboriginal Justice Inquiry 'not going to occur in my lifetime': Murray Sinclair

The co-commissioner of a seminal investigation into racism in the justice system is now speaking out about events that shocked him, saddened him and worried him during the historic hearings.

Murray Sinclair says the level of hate that emerged during the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry was so great, it reminded him of the Ku Klux Klan. The backlash was so strong he had death threats. 

"An RCMP officer came to my house and said, 'We have information that a City of Winnipeg police officer's threatened to kill you,'" he told the CBC during an interview about this month's 30th anniversary of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry's final report. 

Sinclair, who is also a retired senator and was co-chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was co-commissioner of the inquiry, which probed the role that racism played in the 1971 homicide of Cree teenager Helen Betty Osborne and the 1988 police shooting of Indigenous leader John Joseph (J.J.) Harper.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Sinclair shared stories that ranged from the personal — he believes in reincarnation — to previously undisclosed details from the midst of the hearings, like the aforementioned death threat.

"For a period of weeks, we had RCMP officers watching our house and making sure that nothing happened, and they would accompany me when I would go anywhere in the public," Sinclair said.

In the end, the threat was deemed baseless, attributed to the drunken ramblings of an off-duty officer, Sinclair said.

Sinclair also says the moment he learned that J.J. Harper had been fatally shot by police, he knew the Indigenous leader was innocent.

"I knew there was something wrong with that story, and I didn't like the sound of it," Sinclair said.

It was March 9, 1988. Sinclair, a newly appointed judge, was at home after a long day in court.

He got word that Harper — a friend and colleague — had been fatally shot by police after an alleged encounter with them.

"The alarm bell going off in my head was that this was not the way that I knew that JJ Harper would conduct himself," Sinclair said. "He was not the kind of person who would react violently to the way that he was treated."

Within hours, another "alarm bell" was raised — when the officer who shot Harper was exonerated, by the chief of police himself.

"The chief of police very quickly stepped up on behalf of the officer and said, 'this is what happened, and you can believe me and the officer was in the right,'" Sinclair said.