Indigenous Education: Sept 30 National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Orange Shirt Day was inspired by the personal story of Phyllis Webstad. 

To learn more about Phyllis, read her story in her own words.

You can also learn more in this video and listen to this radio interview.

The Indian Residential School Survivors Society is a provincial organization working to provide services to Indian Residential School survivors. They suggest the following actions anyone can take to make a step towards Reconciliation.

• Learn about the impacts of the Indian Residential School system

• Read the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions's 94 recommendations

• Contact your MPs and local officials

• Actively listen to people of First Nations, Inuit and Métis backgrounds

• Stand up to stereotypes, prejudice and systemic racism

• Have conversations with your family and friends (even children)

• Be respectful towards trauma survivors and elders

• Support Indigenous-led community organizations

• Be patient, empathetic & receptive (it's distressing for everyone)

• Raise awareness in your community/online (wear orange)   

September 30, 2021 marks the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. 

The day honours the lost children and Survivors of residential schools, their families and communities. Public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools is a vital component of the reconciliation process. 

The creation of this federal statutory holiday was through legislative amendments made by Parliament on June 3, 2021.

Begin your learning journey today on the path towards truth and reconciliation.

Indian residential schools were a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples, funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and operated and administered by Christian churches. 

Using the familiar idea of the school system, rather than education, the purpose of the residential school network was a systemic effort to remove Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and to force assimilation into the dominant Canadian culture.

Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, about 30 percent of Indigenous children (around 150,000) were placed in residential schools nationally. During the residential school era it is estimated that 6,000 children died while attending these schools. There are approximately 80,000 survivors of these schools alive today.

Indian residential schools operated across Canada between 1831 and 1996. The earliest recognized and longest running residential school was the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario (1831–1962). The last federally run residential school to close was Gordon’s School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, which closed in 1996.

It wasn't until the release in 2015 of the report of Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and its 94 calls for action for reconciliation that the details of this brutal and horrifying part of Canada’s history began to be recognized by Canadians. The TRC report concluded that the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide.

Orange Shirt Day focuses our attention on this shameful historical legacy, but perhaps even more importantly, it offers an opportunity to celebrate the resilience and bravery of the survivors and their families. By telling their stories and offering the generosity of a path to reconciliation, a better future is offered for all Canadians.

BC First Nations Indigenous Map