To listen to the interview please head to CBC News.

Culture & Community Experience

Indigenous Orientation is more than a welcome, it’s a vibrant celebration of identity, learning and belonging. From the moment the event begins, students will be encircled in a welcoming atmosphere filled with cultural activities, entertainment and opportunities to build lasting connections.

Interactive stations will offer a wide range of experiences:

• Academic, cultural, and leadership resource booths
• Traditional games and tipi activities
• A registry bus and a status card clinic
• A photo booth and vendor market

Between 11:00 a.m. and noon, a special visit from Prairie Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre will offer a unique moment of connection with the natural world, a reminder of the deep ties between Indigenous cultures and the land. Live entertainment starts at 11:30 a.m., bringing music and energy into the space.

 “Indigenous Orientation Day is a time to explore groups and opportunities that UM has to offer and find your potential place on campus,” says Lauren Hallett (she/they), a Community Health Sciences student. “To build a village, you have to be a villager.”

Connection, Support & Spiritual Balance

The event is designed to support students holistically, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually as they begin or continue their academic journey. Shelley’s Bistro will serve a free lunch at noon inside Migizii Agamik, offering a chance to share a meal and stories in a space built for gathering and reflection.

A meaningful activity that day will be the Orange Shirt origami making led by Kookum Karen. This hands-on activity invites participants to fold paper shirts in honour of Orange Shirt Day and the children affected by residential schools. It’s a quiet yet powerful way to reflect on Truth and Reconciliation and carry that spirit into the academic year.

“Indigenous Orientation is about helping students, whether first year or returning, to find mental, physical, emotional and/or spiritual balance in their personal life as they set out to achieve their educational goals,” shares Norman Meade, Elder-in-Residence.

Everyone Is Welcome: Join the Celebration

As the afternoon unfolds, lawn games and tipi activities will be available all day inviting students to relax, play and engage with one another in a spirit of joy and togetherness. There will also be scheduled tours of Migizii Agamik at 11:30 a.m. and again at 1:30 p.m. as well at 1:30 p.m., the final call will be made for students to complete their Passport Game cards, a fun and interactive way to explore the event and earn a beautifully designed Indigenous UM Bison t-shirt.

“This is an exciting event for the Indigenous Student Centre as it kicks off a lot of our programming,” says Carla Loewen, Director of the Indigenous Student Centre. “It’s also a time for the campus community to welcome everyone to the new academic year.”

Everyone, Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, staff and faculty is warmly invited to attend. Whether you’re seeking academic support, cultural connection or simply a place to belong, Indigenous Orientation is your gateway to the vibrant and welcoming Indigenous community at UM.

So, mark your calendar, bring your curiosity, and come ready to connect. Your village is waiting.

With the SISF grant, we will expand the role of North American Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame member Patti Kusturok to that of DFOM Artist-in-Residence. As part of her role, Kusturok will be offering one-on-one fiddling lessons to DFOM students and to UM students outside of DFOM. She will also be teaching a 3 credit course in the Fall 2025 term titled MUSC 3830 (T49) Fiddling across the Country which will explore Canada’s diverse fiddling tradition by taking a look at the many fiddling styles practiced in Canada, listening to various fiddlers and discovering what makes them unique. In addition to using recordings, live fiddlers will be invited as guests in the course. 

In 2025-26, DFOM is also creating a fiddling outreach by connecting Patti Kusturok and some of our DFOM students with the Sistema program, run by Jeffrey Acosta for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. In addition to this link with middle school and high school members of the Sistema program, we will also host other outreach events, including a Fiddling Showcase at the Desautels Concert Hall on March 14, 2026, in partnership with the Red River Fiddle and Dance Society.

Complete registration information for Fiddling across the Country is below: 

MUSC 3830 (T49) – Fiddling across the Country 
3 credits 
CRN 26534 
Fall 2025 term 
Thursday 5:30-8:30  
Instructor – Patti Kusturok

Singing Back the Buffalo is part of Tasha Hubbard’s academic work to support Indigenous narrative sovereignty in North America and Indigenous efforts to return buffalo to the lands. She is a founding director of the International Buffalo Relations Institute and has worked to support the Buffalo Treaty for the past ten years. Making the film was a long journey across the plains for Hubbard. She speaks of following the path of the buffalo with other Indigenous women and an especially moving experience visiting a herd in Banff National Park when the herd matriarchs responded to the women’s songs and stayed with them on their journey. The return of the buffalo to the heart of the North American plains, as Hubbard explains, signals a turning point for Indigenous nations, the ecosystem, and our collective survival in a time of global uncertainty and environmental degradation.

Melody McKiver’s compelling music brings the story of Singing Back the Buffalo to life. McKiver is a well-known violist and composer whose musical work integrates electronics with classical music. A proud member of Obishikokaang Lac Seul First Nation, McKiver is also a member of the Mizi’iwe Aana Kwat (LGBTQ2S+ Council) within the Anishinaabe Nation of Treaty #3. In 2020 they received the Canada Council’s Robert Fleming Prize for a promising emergent Canadian composer. Two of their pieces for solo viola were featured on Marina Thibeault’s 2022 Juno-winning album Viola Borealis featuring l’Orchestra de l’Agora. These two pieces, Ningodwaaswi and Niizh, are part of a larger work entitled Reckoning, dedicated to the memory of McKiver’s grandmother, a residential school survivor. At the Faculty of Music, McKiver teaches Perspectives on Indigenous Music and courses in songwriting, production, digital composition, and contemporary performance practice.

Event details: Wednesday, February 12, 2025

• 11:30am to 12:30pm in 307 Tier Building: Tasha Hubbard in Conversation with Melody McKiver
• 6:15pm at the Winnipeg Art Gallery: food catered by Feast Bistro, followed by free screening of Singing Back the Buffalo at 7:00pm (part of the Decolonizing Lens film series)

The sharing circle will take place twice in Winter Term: Wednesday, January 22 and Thursday, February 13 at 3:00 p.m., both in Gaa-maamawabing – Gathering Place (Rm 322) in the Education Building. Snacks and drinks will also be provided.

Claire Settee has been an intern at UM Libraries since 2023 while she works on a Master of Library and Information Studies. She is Anishinaabe, Cree and Scottish, with family ties to Fisher River and Hollow Water, and has lived in Winnipeg for most of her life. With the Indigenous Reading Circle, she wants to create a dedicated time and space for Indigenous students to talk about what they are reading with each other.  

“Sometimes in classes, everyone is trying to discuss at once and then you’ll have an idea, but the discussion goes a different way, and you don’t get the chance to say your thoughts. But you still want to talk through your ideas with someone,” Settee says. She hopes the Indigenous Reading Circle can be that outlet. “I want people to know that they have something to say, and they should practice speaking up and sharing their ideas and questions.”

The Indigenous Reading Circle will be kept small for a more intimate and less intimidating discussion experience, and participating students can bring anything they are reading, from a novel they’re enjoying to something they’re reading in class that they find confusing. Settee will facilitate the hour-and-half-long discussions and use her expertise to provide information on relevant library and campus services and resources but is also open to seeing how the group evolves. She hopes participants will meet other Indigenous students, discover new resources, and get excited about reading.

Register for the Indigenous Reading Circle.

For any questions about the event, contact Claire Settee.

“As the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba and the second in Canada, his historic achievements have set a new course for inclusive leadership within the judiciary, showing us that law can transcend the confines of colonial control to become a foundation for a shared and equitable future,” said Dr. Richard Jochelson, Dean of Law. “We extend our deepest condolences to Justice Sinclair’s family and community and to all those who were moved by his profound life’s work. Justice Sinclair’s guidance will be ever present as we continue our journey of Reconciliation at the Faculty of Law.”

Dr. Lorna Turnbull who served as both Associate Dean (2005 – 2010) and Dean of Law (2010 – 2016), recalled the impact of her friend and colleague’s involvement with the law school. “Murray’s mentorship was fundamental to the important steps the law school took starting around 2005 to be responsive to the reality of being the only law school in a province with the highest proportion of Indigenous people,” she said. “He later agreed to take on the role of leading the creation of a Chair in Indigenous Law, saying “I am prepared to consider taking this role on. It is one of great significance and of personal importance to me.” A wonderful tribute to his work and his legacy in creating a more just world would be for us to see this come to fruition now.”

Sinclair was connected with the Faculty of Law since his law student days. “I went into law school to get into politics,” Sinclair told Dr. Bryan Schwartz in an interview for The Manitoba Law Journal in 2018. Having already worked for his MLA, Howard Pawley, for four years and having been involved with the Selkirk Friendship Centre and Manitoba Metis Federation, he felt getting a law degree would give him “instant credibility” in politics. “But, law school seduced me into law,” he admitted.

Cliff Edwards, late Dean of Law (1964 – 1979), would visit Sinclair following his graduation and talk about some of the work he was involved with in his legal practice. “The one thing that Cliff Edwards used to say … was that the importance of Indigenous people coming to law was not so that the law school could claim them, it was so that they could claim the law. In other words, this law does not belong to white people, we talked about that a lot,” Sinclair said in 2018. “If the law was going to be representative of people, then the people who it represented had to be here. He saw that as important, but he also saw it important that the law school have a social responsibility to the community, that it needed to work to overcome the history of law. The history of law is the history of racism – he knew that.”

Sinclair started law school during a turbulent time in the 1970s when several attempts had been made to address the treatment and state of social conditions of Indigenous people, none of which led to actual change.  Shortly after he started to practice law, dialogue which led to the Constitution Act of 1982 began, and Sinclair was involved in the middle of it all.

In the mid-1980s, Sinclair was asked to join the provincial court bench, but turned it down three times. “I was involved in some really interesting work that I didn’t want to leave behind,” he told Schwartz.

Ultimately, he accepted the appointment initially thinking he could serve on the bench for about a year, make his mark, and then return to ordinary legal practice, but a series of fateful events postponed that return for about 24 years. Sinclair told Schwartz, “I was sworn in on March the 3^rd, which was a Friday […] and then the following Tuesday, J.J. Harper was shot, the following Wednesday, the Pawley government was defeated in a vote of non-confidence, and the following Friday, they appointed the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry Commission.”

As one of the commissioners on the AJI, Sinclair realized the impactful role he would have in bringing about much-needed change in the justice system, specifically, in changing the way sentencing was done. “That was part of our work in the AJI, talking about the importance of taking into account the proper history that Indigenous people had come through.”

Sinclair then became Manitoba’s first Indigenous person to be appointed to the Court of Queen’s Bench in 2001, chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission starting in 2009, and served on Canada’s Senate from 2016 to 2021. Finally in 2022, he returned to practicing law at the Winnipeg firm of Cochrane Saxberg (now Cochrane Sinclair).

Reflecting on the future of law schools in the Manitoba Law Journal interview in 2018, the then-Senator observed that Manitoba was losing Indigenous law students to other provinces, partly due to a lack of recruitment, and a lack of having Indigenous scholars on Faculty demonstrating interest in and support for scholarly and academic work in Indigenous topics. “There’s a sense of connection to what the law school is committed to doing within Canadian society about the Indigenous community, perhaps more properly put, that makes them feel that they will be more welcome there than is the case here […] changing the perception of this law school among young Indigenous students would not be a big jump, but it’s an important one you haven’t made yet. It needs to be made,” Sinclair told Schwartz.

When working with the president of the University of Manitoba about its potential to be a place of excellence for Indigenous issues, it made sense to Sinclair to bring the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to the Fort Garry campus. Similarly, he said, “The law school should do the same thing and … communicate that desire, that commitment, and that effort to other students. It is not just Indigenous students that you want to attract here, it’s non-Indigenous students as well, that want to do work in Indigenous areas.”

In the past six years since Sinclair’s comments were recorded in the Manitoba Law Journal, the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba has implemented many changes to fulfill the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report’s Call to Action number 28, which calls upon “law schools in Canada to require all law students to take a course in Aboriginal people and the law, which includes the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, and Aboriginal–Crown relations. This will require skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights, and anti-racism.”

Turnbull recalled how Sinclair worked closely with the law school to integrate Indigenous perspectives and legal orders well before he left the bench to serve as Chief commissioner of the TRC. “He helped shape plans for raising the profile of the Faculty among Indigenous students, for fundraising, and for building a more inclusive curriculum,” she said. “He inspired students and Indigenous colleagues as a regular visitor and speaker at the Faculty during my tenure as Associate Dean and Dean, and even spoke to the Canadian Council of Law Deans about the imperative to incorporate education about Indigenous legal orders before the TRC was created.”

In 2021, the Dean’s Office formed a Truth and Reconciliation Action Team consisting of Indigenous members of the practicing bar, faculty, and students, and a newly hired Director of Indigenous Legal Studies and Services with whom to consult and advise on implementation of CTA 28. The Faculty was honoured to have Sinclair as part of this team. The Faculty also hired two new Indigenous Faculty members with an objective of hiring more academics with backgrounds and research agendas focused in this area of law. Currently, three Indigenous tenure-track professors and two Indigenous staff work at Robson Hall, along with at least four Indigenous practicing professional instructors who teach courses each year in addition to practicing law. An endowed chair in Indigenous law and economic reconciliation is also being planned.

The Director of Indigenous Legal Studies and Services, Robson Hall alum Marc Kruse [JD/15], conducted a curriculum review to ensure Indigenization of all courses offered in the Juris Doctor program, and was instrumental in the Faculty’s success in passing through Senate, a course on Indigenous Methodologies and Perspectives, which became mandatory for all second-year law students in 2023. “Justice Sinclair helped guide the creation of our mandatory course which is now taught to all second-year law students at Robson Hall, which I co-teach with our two new Indigenous faculty members Dr. Leo Baskatawang and Professor Daniel Diamond,” said Kruse

Kruse had the opportunity to work with Sinclair before applying for law school, while working with Sinclair as a student volunteer at the Legal Help Centre.  “He helped solidify my choice to attend law school and try to help the larger community,” he said. “I, like most Indigenous law students, have been and continue to be, inspired by the Honourable Murray Sinclair.”

Kruse recalled that after Sinclair was named Elder in Residence at Robson Hall, he gave his time to meet with the Indigenous faculty and students as the law school stepped into a new stage of Indigenous legal education at the University of Manitoba. “His passing will be difficult for all Canadians but especially those to whom he gave his time and guidance.”

We will continue on the path he set for us at Robson Hall and do our best to help move us towards a relationship of mutual respect between Indigenous Peoples and the rest of Canada.

Marc Kruse [JD/15] – Director of Indigenous Legal Learning and Services

Starting in the fall of 2023, the Faculty added the Cochrane Sinclair Indigenous Law Clinic to its roster of six experiential learning opportunities. Facilitated by the law firm of Cochrane Sinclair, law students are being trained to help members of the public to apply for pardons and for Indigenous Status. Land-based learning is also becoming a part of the JD curriculum for all law students.

Since 2023, an annual conference has been held in support of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Indigenous Inaakonigewin to foster the collaboration and growth of the study of Indigenous Legal Orders. 

Starting in August of 2022, the Faculty of Law announced two Elders-in-Residence, including Sinclair, and Wendy Whitecloud a retired law school instructor, student advisor, and commissioner on the Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission.

Looking back on Sinclair’s influence on the Faculty of Law, Jochelson said, “Justice Sinclair’s vision of law as a pathway toward a reimagined future—one that values mutual respect, healing, and shared purpose—continues to inspire our Faculty. He has shown us that law can be more than a means of control or colonization; it can be a space for transformation, woven from the diverse aspirations of all people. His teachings are embedded in our future, guiding us to advance his work and bring forth the shared, compassionate world he envisioned.”

Sharing circles are safe spaces for students to share their experiences and receive support, teachings and care from an ISC Elder or Knowledge Keeper-in-Residence. The sharing circles take place every Tuesday at 1 p.m. in the Circle Room at Migizii Agamik – Bald Eagle Lodge. All UM students are welcome to participate.  

Why attend? 

“We learn from one another by sharing with each other,” says Elder Meade. “For every strength, there is a weakness – and weakness is strength. This is an important teaching.” Sharing circles are a place to: 

• learn teachings and pass on teachings.  

• receive support and guidance from Elders and your peers in a safe space. 

• build community through sharing stories and exploring values, which helps participants feel physically, psychologically and emotionally safe and creates a foundation for courageous acts of sharing. 

“The reason you should come to a sharing circle is to come and share what you might be dealing with or going through right now – that’s why I like to go to a sharing circle,” says Elder Meade. “If I don’t go to a sharing circle often enough, I miss being there because every one of us—doesn’t matter who we are—we have to share what’s on our mind, what’s on our spirit today and we’re all in a different place.” 

What to expect 

When you attend a sharing circle, know that what you share in the sharing circle, stays in the circle.    

“Students are often a bit shy about sharing what they might be struggling with and if there’s a certain number of people in the circle some people won’t share their personal things”, says Meade. “For myself, when I’m in a sharing circle or leading a sharing circle, I let the participants know what you bring into the circle stays in the circle because that’s important. For me, personally, when I’m sharing in a sharing circle, I will share what might be on my heart or my mind or my spirit at that very time.” 

As part of a sharing circle, you will: 

• Listen–sharing circles are a listening exercise, as well as a sharing exercise where we learn how to listen.  

• Share – you can share when you have the talking stick or stone. That’s your time to speak and for others to listen.  

• Feel – it can be an emotional experience because you’re able to share about yourself and things you may be dealing with. 

Elders are careful not to let the sharing circle become a gossip session or to have misinformation spread – because that’s not what sharing circles are about.  

“For myself, if I’m just introducing myself in a sharing circle and have nothing that’s heavy on my heart then I will share personal things of where I’m at and what I’m doing and how I’m feeling,” says Meade. “I’ll share where some of my strengths and weaknesses come from, the weaknesses that we encounter in life and how does strength offset weaknesses; it’s good to talk about ‘my weakness is this’ because strength helps get us through the weakness.”  

Students should not feel intimidated at a sharing circle. They are a welcoming place, where respect is the most important thing, especially when it comes to the Elders.  

“Most of the students I know, they have respect for us as Elders – they all show their respect in different ways. Some of the first-year students and second year students may have never sat in a circle where an Elder is present or had a chance to sit with an Elder,” says Elder Meade. “So, they might have a little different way of relating to an Elder but ones that have been there before or been in a sharing circle before, they would know how to respect an Elder and that’s really important to see, for everyone.” 

Find upcoming dates for the Student Sharing Circle with Elder Norman Meade on the Indigenous Events Calendar.