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Orange Shirt Day

Two people wearing orange shirts that have the words Every Child Matters

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

September 30 is Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, a day set aside to reflect on the tragedies experienced by diverse Indigenous communities across Turtle Island as a result of settler colonialism. As part of the legacy of Canada’s colonial history, and as a means to systematically displace and assimilate Indigenous people, residential schools were established and operated until as recent as 1996. Referred to as cultural genocide , residential schools forcibly removed an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children from their homes and communities, inflicting upon them and their families violence and unimaginable forms of abuse. The process of remembering is anchored in what has become known as Orange Shirt Day.

Orange Shirt Day started as a response to the legacy of the St. Joseph Mission (SJM) Indian Residential School in Williams Lake, BC, Canada in the spring of 2013.

It grew out of Phyllis' story of having her new orange shirt taken away on her first day of school at the Mission. In sharing her story, Phyllis mobilized people to action and as a result, Orange Shirt Day / Every Child Matters was created. September 30 was once a day tied to the removal of children from their homes to attend Indian Residential Schools far from their families and communities. Thanks to Phyllis and Williams Lake, it is now a day of commemoration and remembrance - a day to learn the history and truth of Indian Residential Schools.

In 1996, 27 survivors of the Alberni Residential School filed a lawsuit and won (Black Water vs. Pint 2005). The Canadian Government and the United Church of Canada were found libel after 9 years. This was the catalyst that the Government needed to take action, setting a precedent for further lawsuits and making way for compensation to be paid to the survivors. This is the same year that the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples Report was published, including five volumes and 4000 pages.

By 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission started taking testimonies on where Indigenous children’s bodies were located – information that had been documented in the Royal Commission report back in 1996 – but no action was taken at the time.

139 Residential Schools have been recognized in the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report. We know that these are not all the Residential Schools that operated across Canada, and that Day Schools were also operated during this time. In 2021, after the finding of the unmarked graves by the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, the federal government declared September 30 as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and that it should be recognized as a federal statutory holiday. Currently, 10,028 unmarked graves have been found in only the 11 school grounds that have been searched. There are still 128 schools grounds that need to be searched.

In consultation with Indigenous community members across the College and our Aboriginal Education Council (AEC), and in recognition of our commitment to reconciliation as captured in our Indigenous Strategic Framework, Centennial has dedicated September 30 as a day of reflection, engagement and learning for all of our students and employees, and will, as a result, be cancelling classes and suspending campus operations.

It is the expectation of the College that all members of our community will be engaging in a day of reflection “to honour survivors, their families, and communities, and ensure that public commemoration of the history and legacy of residential schools remains a vital component of the reconciliation process.”

We as a College are deeply committed to providing our community members with transformative education on “the history of Aboriginal peoples, including the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, and Aboriginal-Crown relations” (Call to Action #57). We take this responsibility seriously to honour our commitment to the Mississaugas of the Credit and to the members of all other Indigenous Nations that have called this area home and “accept our responsibility to honour all our relations” as treaty people, because it is on their lands that we exist.

We are also committed to amplifying the mandate of Centennial’s Place of Reconciliation for All Our Relations and our calling to Light the Eighth Fire: “The prophecy is a traditional teaching that should and will be honoured within our strategy: to honour all our relations…to honour the legacy of the generations whom are to follow and rekindle the embers of times past. Also, it is meant to give direction and develop opportunity to strengthen the ties between two worlds who are dedicated to educate about the Seventh Fire prophecy and give way to the generations who carry the legacy of our Indigenous ancestors’ teachings” (Joseph-ban McQuabbie). 

To learn more about Orange Shirt Day and Phyllis’s story, please visit the Orange Shirt Society website.

On September 30 and Beyond, We Encourage You to Engage In a Day of Reflection with the Resources Below