Orange Shirt Day

Actions Demand Justice and Accountability from Canadian State

Montreal, September 30, 2024

The 11th Orange Shirt Day and the fourth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation were marked across Canada on September 30, 2024. Communities large and small from coast to coast to coast held ceremonies, marches, rallies and other events to mark the day. Across Canada, Indigenous Peoples, Canadians and Quebeckers joined together to honour the survivors of the brutality and indignities Indigenous Peoples endured in residential schools. Events expressed the unity of the Indigenous Peoples, Canadians and Quebeckers who are demanding justice for the survivors and their families and for an end to the state-organized genocide against Indigenous Peoples that continues to this day in spite of talk of "reconciliation."

More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were taken from their communities between 1867 and 1996 by agents of the colonial state and forced to attend boarding schools run by Christian churches where they were stripped of their languages, identity and dignity. The aim of the state was to destroy the Indigenous Peoples by depriving them of their collective way of life in tune with nature. Suppressing their languages, culture and spirituality for purposes of eliminating their memory and thought material were crucial to the state to steal the territories and impose Anglo-Canadian rule on the Indigenous Peoples. As individuals who gave up their identity they were allowed citizenship within the Canadian body politic.

More than 6,000 of the children perished in residential schools through malnutrition, disease, torture and suicide. That the forced assimilation and genocide did not succeed is a reflection of the resilience and defiance of the Indigenous Peoples and the children themselves, many of whom tried to escape and return to their homes.

A thousand people marched through the streets of Montreal following speeches and ceremony performed by an elder from Kahnawake Mohawk Territory at the foot of Mount Royal. Nakuset, executive director of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal which organized the event, called on youth to step up and fight for the implementation of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because the government is not going to, with only 11 of the 94 calls to action implemented in nearly 10 years.

On Parliament Hill a crowd listened to speeches, songs and drumming. Stephanie Scott, executive director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, told the crowd "The residential school system was intended to destroy us, and they did not succeed... Our children suffered in those institutions, and to this day, their spirits call out to all of us to be remembered and honoured."

Ceremonies were held in the Maritimes including Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Fredericton, New Brunswick, and other communities, in towns and cities in Quebec and Ontario.

In Manitoba, thousands of people participated in an Orange Shirt Day healing walk in Winnipeg to honour those who died and those who survived residential schools. Joseph Maud, a member of the Skownan First Nation in Manitoba spoke about attending the Pine Creek residential school until grade three when the school closed in 1969. He, nine years old, and his 11-year-old brother were then taken by a social worker and placed in a foster home in southern Manitoba, victims of the Sixties Scoop. After four and a half years of brutal treatment Maud said that in 1973 he and his brother escaped and made the dangerous 150-kilometre journey through swamps, rivers and muskeg to get to his grandmother's home.

Events took place in many BC communities large and small. Several hundred people gathered at Surrey's Holland Park on September 27 to honour residential school survivors and their families and to remember those who did not return. Bannock and beverages were served and Indigenous dancers and drummers performed. In Port Alberni on Vancouver Island hundreds marched through the streets to the Tseshaht First Nation community where the Alberni Indian Residential School operated until 1973.

The Union of BC Indian Chiefs issued a statement that said, in part,

"On this day, we urge everyone to approach the painful history of residential schools with compassion and open-heartedness. It is imperative to learn about Canada's racist and genocidal origins and to understand the profound significance this day holds for First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities. Survivors, intergenerational survivors and their families continue to bear the weight of the trauma inflicted by Residential Schools, the failed child protection system and other oppressive institutions, including the recent and rampant Residential School denialism expressed by several municipal leaders, institutions and other organizations."

After the Liberal Government came to power in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated in December that year: "There is no relationship more important to me -- and to Canada -- than the one with First Nations, the Métis Nation, and Inuit," and pledged to act with dispatch to implement the 94 Calls to Action put forward by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report after its seven years of investigations.

In spite of his promises little effort has gone into implementing the recommendations. It took more than five years for the government to establish the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, #80 of the TRC's Calls to Action. To divert from the ongoing colonial violence against Indigenous Peoples, and to justify government inaction, Prime Minister Trudeau noted on September 30: "The true journey of reconciliation will take decades."

This is unacceptable. The fact is that the Constitution of Canada puts the Canadian state above the hereditary rights of the Indigenous Peoples and it is bypassing their decision-making power at every turn. Indigenous Peoples, Canadians and Quebeckers want an immediate end to this Canadian state abuse. It is their unity in action and just demands that Canada must uphold the hereditary rights of Indigenous Peoples that are key to renewing the political arrangements in Canada, including drafting a modern democratic constitution that upholds the hereditary and treaty rights of Indigenous Peoples.