Murray ‘n Me
This article was first published in the Minden Times in January 2025.
Not too long ago we used to complain about accommodating weddings and showers into our schedules and budgets, but now it’s funerals and celebrations. Every week the death of an icon of our generation is announced. When we reference people whose ideas or accomplishments we admired, we often check whether they’re still alive, so we know what tense to use in acknowledging their influence. All this within the larger and darker thrall of society as we know it sliding into a dark decline, the death of democracy, the discernible destruction of the earth, the disintegration of civility as a foundation of civilization.
At the same time, widowhood seems in some danger of reappearing as the last chapter of feminism, the phase of life when women get to reclaim who they really, authentically, maturely, are, independent of their wifely and motherly responsibilities. Concern about the quality of that life takes centre stage: where will that widow live? Will she have enough money to be who and what she wants to be? Will her body hold out? Will her mind be good-enough to manage whatever circumstances present? Will she be sufficiently surrounded by love and care? Will she be crammed into medicalized institutions that treat her like a widget? Will the final chapter be worth living? If/when not, will she be allowed a dignified departure?
These are worthy preoccupations, but perhaps we should also be giving thought to what our responsibility as seniors (I don’t say ‘elders’; I’ll get to that) should be to address the mess the world is sliding into which is, to some extent -- through acts of commission and omission -- of our making. Is our work over? Some, the job of growing old and departing this earth, we can’t assign to others. But is there some work that is ours to do before we bid adieu?
Murray Sinclair died in November 2024 at age 73, relatively young for our times. Congestive heart failure. A heart worn out from, perhaps, caring too much, working too assiduously to do what he accepted as his purpose in life. His memoir, Who We Are: Four Questions for a Life and a Nation, hit the shelves in September. It’s an oral narrative edited by his son Niigaan, a prof at UManitoba, and Sara Sinclair, an Indigenous academic of Oral History at Columbia University. In the Anishinaabe tradition, Murray teaches by telling stories. The pinnacle of his life was leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but in the end, he worried that the concept of mutuality that was the foundation of the 94 Calls to Action was not sufficiently rooted to withstand the current lurch toward political regression. The report is included as a post-script to his memoir -- a 200 pages postscript, almost as long as Murray’s story of his life. The memoir part of the book is titled Who We Are, and the report is titled What We Have Learned.
Together these cover his four questions: Where do I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I? His spirit name translates to ‘one who speaks of pictures in the sky’. He interprets this as ‘reading what’s going on around me and understanding that and then explaining it to the people’. He’s an Elder.
An Elder, Murray says, (acknowledging that there are many faux elders out there, folks who just got old) is someone who shares ‘lived learning experiences’ for the potential enlightenment of others. An Elder must have accessed traditional wisdom to reflect on their experiences in order to learn from them, to clarify their path from past to present to future, to know who they are. To share wisdom gained by revisiting the four questions over a lifetime. Elders offer their story with humility and love, hoping that the inherent lesson can be absorbed by one who asks -- if they are able at that moment to learn in that way.
I envy the guidance Murray takes from his history, his lineage and his naming. We settlers are less likely to have our origin stories down pat, to have clan identification and spirit names to guide us. But we can still continuously locate ourselves on the flight path between where we came from and where we’re going and in that thoughtful reflection find our purpose and our persona. We can think critically about where we source our traditional wisdom.
That seems a worthy pathway for widows freed from family caregiving. IF we choose to do the work to become not just oldies but Elders. The next wave of Feminism? Bring it on!
