Ten years since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)'s final report, more students are marking Orange Shirt Day each September. Also known as Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, many spend at least part of the day learning about residential schools, where Indigenous children were forced into government-funded, church-run schools to strip away their culture.

“Can we do it for the other 364 days?” he said from Yellowknife.

Sinclair believes many areas with a high Indigenous population — across Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Northwestern Ontario, for instance — absolutely understand working together to achieve the TRC’s recommendations, which spell out ways to address the legacy of residential schools.

Yet “in many corners of the country, we’re still having a conversation about the why, not about the how,” said Sinclair, whose father was the late Murray Sinclair, the judge and senator who chaired the commission.