Orange Shirt Day, September 30
Build Unity of Canadians, Quebeckers and Indigenous Peoples to Achieve Truth and Reconciliation
Winnipeg, Orange Shirt Day 2023
September 30 is Orange Shirt Day or the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It honours the victims and survivors of the Indian Residential School System, into which more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were abducted by the Canadian colonial state. These children were sent to Church-run schools far away from their families in an effort to destroy the cultures of Indigenous Peoples, and extinguish them as peoples in a brutal colonizing project. National Truth and Reconciliation Day also honours the victims of the Sixties Scoop in which Indigenous children were taken away from their families by child welfare agencies and placed for adoption or put in institutions.
Indigenous Peoples, Canadians and Quebeckers will hold rallies, marches, cultural events and vigils across the country. Programs are also being held in many schools to mark the day.
Orange Shirt Day dates back to May 2013. At an event to honour residential school survivors in Williams Lake, BC, the orange shirt was brought forward as the symbol of the suffering of those children and their ongoing struggle for justice today. In the wake of the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School on May 22, 2021, and similar discoveries at other residential schools, and the ongoing abuse and neglect of Indigenous youth by the Canadian state the slogan "Every Child Matters" has come to adorn many orange shirts. Orange ribbons and displays of empty pairs of children's shoes are other symbols that mark the day and what it represents. In 2021, the federal government declared September 30 a federal statutory holiday to coincide with Orange Shirt Day.
National Truth and Reconciliation
Day is an expression of the unity between the Indigenous
Peoples, Canadians and Quebeckers to not only recognize the
wrongdoing of the Canadian state in the past, but to end the
ongoing state violence against Indigenous Peoples today. It is
also an expression of political unity to work together to ensure
justice for the more than 6,000 children who died in residential
schools, according to the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation
Commission's (TRC) Report. At the same time it reflects the
determination to ensure that the survivors of the Residential
School System and their families are properly compensated and
supported to make up for this genocide by holding the Canadian
governments and state institutions to account.
In 2015, the Trudeau government promised that a "new relationship" with Indigenous Peoples was high on its agenda. However, the ongoing situation facing Indigenous Peoples in Canada, especially the negation of their rights by the Canadian state, such as brutal state violence against land defenders to serve private interests, make clear that these are empty words. It shows that for the government, the realization of the TRC's calls are a matter of convenience and optics, not principle.
CPC(M-L) calls on everyone to step up the work to realize just relations between Canadians, Quebeckers and Indigenous Peoples. This work to build the people's unity in this fight for justice is what is decisive and what will prevail.
This article was published in
September 30, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/ITN2024/Articles/TI54211.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca