People across Canada will be wearing orange Wednesday in support of residential school survivors.
This year’s theme of Tikinagan Child and Family Services’ campaign is Honour the Journey: Commit to Reconciliation.
Executive Director of Tikinagan, Thelma Morris explains what they strive to accomplish by promoting Orange Shirt Day every year.
“By wearing orange, people can stand together with Indigenous peoples and honour the journey of resilience our peoples have made. Without the strength, courage and hope of our peoples, agencies like ours would not exist. We are a community based child and family well-being agency rooted in and accountable to the First Nations communities we serve because of the visionaries who fought against adversity to retain our rights and culture as First Nations.”
September 30th has been declared as Orange Shirt Day, to acknowledge the effects of residential school and to support reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
The date was chosen because it marks the time of year when children were taken from their homes to residential schools and presents an opportunity to set anti-racism and anti-bullying policies for the school year.
Morris says acknowledgments like this are a step towards healing, awareness and reconciliation.
“I think it’s important to recognize anti-racism and anti-bullying because as indigenous peoples that is part of our history. Indigenous peoples never had a choice if they could stay at home and keep their kids at home. So we want to encourage anti-bulling, including cyber-bullying because you see a lot of negative media around indigenous population-stereotyping. So we’re hoping that we can create awareness that we’re still on a healing journey.
Morris adds it’s important to continue the conversation about residential schools and it’s affect on Indigenous people to this day.
“We do need to honour every person’s story about residential schools and making sure we continue to be open and talk about the history and generational trauma that we still see within our people.”
Tikinagan encourages Northwestern Ontario and the 30 First Nations they serve to acknowledge Orange Shirt Day, take the day as an opportunity to listen to Indigenous peoples and move forward towards reconciliation.
You can read more about Orange Shirt Day here.
