“A deep dive into the city of Winnipeg through the lives and worlds of its original inhabitants, Wînipêk is a necessary and important book: profound, difficult and expansive. Niigaan Sinclair accomplishes the near impossible by creating a compelling and nuanced whole out of a series of newspaper columns. Wînipêk unearths histories of colonial violence, grounded in the wisdom and experiences of those who survived and survive it.”
—Peer assessment committee: Jordan Abel, Robyn Maynard and Mary Soderstrom

Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe from Peguis First Nation and a professor at the University of Manitoba, where he holds the Faculty of Arts Professorship in Indigenous Knowledge and Aesthetics in the Department of Indigenous Studies. Niigaan is a multiple nominee of Canadian columnist of the year (winning in 2018) and is a featured commentator on CBC's Power & Politics and APTN’s Truth and Politics panel. Niigaan was recently named to the “Power List” by Maclean’s magazine as one of the most influential individuals in Canada and is a former secondary school teacher who won the 2019 Peace Educator of the Year from the Peace and Justice Studies Association based at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He is an award-winning author, speaker, and curriculum developer, and was co-editor of Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water (Highwater Press)—the book voted by Manitobans in the “On the Same Page” competition as the top book to read in 2012.

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Imagine you could spend a day with any person, living or dead. Who would you choose and what would you do?

It would undoubtedly be my grandfather – Henry Sinclair. The love I felt from my grandfather was the most incredible love in the world; he lit up seeing me and loved spending time with me in ways I cannot ever describe. He was a residential school survivor and World War II veteran who had witnessed and experienced the worst this world had to offer yet he remained the most beautiful, kindest, and warm person I’ve ever known. He was living proof that nothing – not any of colonialism’s worst forms of violence, racism, or trauma – could defeat love. I try to live up to this gift he gave me every day and would do anything to spend a few minutes experiencing time with him again.

What advice would you give your ten-year-old self about 2024?

I would sit that little boy down and tell him everything is going to be okay. I would tell him he is loved despite his worst fears. I would tell him he is beautiful despite his deep insecurities. I would tell him his best successes will come when he realizes he is capable, skilled, and a miracle created by his ancestors. I would tell him the things he might not value now will come to be
valuable later. I would tell him to be ready for his many mistakes to come but always forgive himself in the end. I would tell him to take time to look around, especially in the moments that he knows won’t come again. I would tell him to not be afraid to love. I would then tell him, again, that he is going to be ok, despite his worst fears.

Who has been the biggest influence in your journey as a writer?

My biggest influence as a writer came from working with Tlicho novelist and incredible human being and writer Richard Van Camp – whose incredible skill and dedication has set the bar for
me alongside his ethic of building community through writing. Richard has literally, alongside many others in the field of Indigenous literatures, raised a generation of Indigenous writers
who are now Canada’s top bestselling, award-winning, and most robust authors. I can only hope to one day add a line to the incredible book he and his relations have written.

What did you learn about yourself as you worked on Wînipêk?

I learned the truth of a famous phrase I often heard from an elder, who told me: “Everything we need for life was placed by the Creator in this place.”

For a long time I was taught that what I needed to be successful in this world was elsewhere – in other words, not where I lived, loved, and thrived. Since this time I have journeyed throughout the world – from Europe to Asia to Africa to nearly every single place Turtle Island has to offer – and come to realize that a significant part of the answer to the questions and
problems the world seeks is found in Wînipêk. It’s in the struggles and successes of the people here, the land, the experiences of all in this place. Winnipeg is not perfect, of course, but it is certainly not the darling or dud media make it out to be; it is a place on the cutting edge of hope, truth, and this country’s most critical issue: reconciliation.

What was the last book by a Canadian author that changed you in some way?

It’s not my most recent read but One Story One Song by the late Richard Wagamese is the book I return to near every day. I not only love that collection of pieces but it remains the gold
standard for what I think a book can do. It’s readerly, it’s kind, and also tough and truthful and sad and so, so dynamic and skillful. It’s Richard Wagamese at his best.

Few texts make complicated histories, issues and ideas so straightforward and clear with lyrical complexity and brilliant metaphor. I truly wish that one day I could write one-tenth of the way Wagamese did.

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Excerpt from Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre

OPENING WORDS

A Territorial Acknowledgement

When I joined the Winnipeg Free Press as its city columnist in 2018, there was no official recognition of First Nations at the Manitoba provincial legislature.

The Manitoba legislature building and its 120,000 square metres of grounds are located in the downtown core of Winnipeg. It’s a stately and impressive building. Allegorical and symbolic images and installations exist everywhere here; in the architecture, plaques, and sculptures—and most notably the infamous Golden Boy, who sits on the very top of the building, representing Manitoba’s “eternal youth and progress.” Over the years, commemorations have been added to officially recognize communities who contributed to the province. The majority recognize British and French contributions, such as the statues of Major General James Wolfe, British Commander at the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham; Lord Dufferin, Governor General of Canada from 1872 to 1878; Sieur de La Vérendrye, an eighteenth-century French fur trader and explorer; and Thomas Douglas, the Fifth Earl of Selkirk, who established a Scottish settlement along the Red River. There are installations honouring a Ukrainian poet, an Icelandic politician, and Sir William S. Stephenson (whose life served as the inspiration for the character of James Bond).

There are memorials to Nellie McClung and the suffragette movement, the Holocaust, and Hiroshima. And, of course, there is an honouring of the Red River Métis with a sculpture of Louis Riel (installed in 1996). In all of this recognition, however, nothing acknowledged the first peoples of this place. In the heart of Manitoba’s government, largest city, and Treaty 1 territory—the place where Canada took its first steps as a country—it was as if First Nations didn’t exist.

The statue of Queen Victoria at the Manitoba Legislative Building lies on the ground after being toppled off its base on Canada Day. ruth bonneville / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

So, on Canada Day 2021, a century after the legislature opened and 151 years after Manitoba became a province, citizens changed the story. In the midst of maple-syrupy celebrations in downtown Winnipeg, a group came together to create two new monuments at the legislature—ironically, out of statues celebrating Canada’s colonial past. The first was an editing of the statue of Queen Victoria—the largest statue of all at the legislature—which was remade to commemorate lost residential school children and murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit peoples. The second was a remaking of a statue of Queen Elizabeth II, which was turned into a statement surrounding modern Canadian-Indigenous relations as it was toppled, turned face-down and covered in ropes. These two new installations, at the centre of power in Winnipeg and Manitoba, marked a remarkable new moment for this place.

Copyright © 2024 by Niigaan Sinclair