Orange Shirt Day is a time to learn, reflect, and commit to active reconciliation

I am writing this as I reside in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien'kehá:ka Nation are the traditional and ongoing caretakers of the land where I, and McGill University as well as the iMPACTS project are situated. While we continue to meet virtually and all hail from different parts of the world, it is important that we learn about whose land we are on, and commit to making reparations with the Indigenous communities who are the traditional caretakers of these lands. Native-Land.ca is a resource that can be used to help you begin to learn about the land you occupy.

September 30th is Orange Shirt Day, a day founded in 2013 to raise awareness about the continued colonization happening on Turtle Island and to pay respect to the many First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children who were taken from their homes and placed into institutions of genocide - known as residential schools. It is a day to open up discussions about the residential school system and to commit to reconciliation – something that should be happening every day.

This year, in the wake of the ongoing and horrific discoveries of mass graves on sites of former residential schools, the commemoration of Orange Shirt Day has rightfully been expanded. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation will be holding a week-long virtual event open to all Canadian schools for grades 5 through 12, and the federal government will now recognize September 30th as a national statutory holiday.

More progress needed

We take this day to unlearn what has been taught to us in our whitewashed history, to re-learn from Indigenous sources, and to continue learning as we move forward. This is particularly important for those of us working as educators and in educational institutions in Canada. In its 2015 final report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called for governments to work with residential school survivors and Indigenous educators on a new kindergarten to grade 12 curriculum which would include lessons on residential schools, Treaties, and Indigenous peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada. The report also called for funding to provide post-secondary institutions with means and tools to help bring Indigenous teaching methods and knowledge into classrooms.

Some minimal progress has been made on these calls to action, according to an Assembly of First Nations report card on the issue: an Indigenous legal program at the University of Victoria and Lakehead University’s required Indigenous-content course. However, much more work needs to be done. Indigenous groups have recently noted in the media that, as grave discoveries continue to be made, the lowering of institutional flags in solidarity with these communities is a bare minimum but creates no real change. Calls continue for proper education on residential schools in elementary and secondary school curriculum, as well as improved access to post-secondary education for Indigenous peoples.

Resources and Information

In this post and in commemoration of Orange Shirt Day, we hope to highlight some of the information and educational resources that exist from Indigenous voices. Decolonizing and Indigenizing education and other systems are crucial pieces of reconciliation. Settlers have a responsibility to be listening and learning from Indigenous sources on this and every day moving forward.

Sam Nepton (she/her) is a U3 undergraduate student studying Kindergarten and Elementary education at McGill. Her research interests include sexual and gender-based violence resource toolkits for students, and the impact of social media influencers on rape culture.