September 2025
Orange Shirt Day 2025
Orange Shirt Day 2025
Photo credit: Joli Rumi via Wikimedia Commons
Today, September 30, is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day.
Ten years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada published its final report. Four years later, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls published its own final report.
Each document is manifestation of courage writ large. Thousands of Indigenous survivors — both of the residential school system and of ongoing systemic violence towards Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQI+ people — bravely shared their stories with the reports’ authors, who then shared them with the world. Woven together, these stories shine a light on an urgent truth: that Canadian settler colonialism was, is, and always will be a project of theft and genocide.
Both reports map out clear pathways to honouring truth and activating reconciliation, to borrow a phrase from Indigenous Climate Action. The TRC’s report contains 94 Calls to Action; the National Inquiry’s contains 231 Calls to Justice. These are tangible steps towards achieving justice and creating a better society for all. But unfortunately, only 13 of the TRC’s Calls to Action had been implemented by 2023. And even this hard-won progress is now in peril, thanks to a new wave of federal, provincial, and municipal legislation that attacks Indigenous sovereignty and strips away treaty rights.
So what can we, as a network of climate-concerned parents, grandparents, families, and caregivers, do?
Perhaps the first thing to do, especially for those of us who are settlers or arrivants on these lands, is to (re)affirm our commitment to decolonial climate justice. The systems that ripped Indigenous children from their families and sent them into residential schools for over 160 years are the same systems that created, sustain, and profit from the climate crisis. As we acknowledge that Indigenous people have and will continue to bear the brunt of the violence inherent to settler colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy, it is also critical to realize that these systems make it impossible for any of us to thrive. In other words, no matter who we are, decolonization is in our collective best interest.
In practice, decolonial climate action can take many forms, but in general requires us to centre the rights, values, and worldviews of Indigenous communities across Turtle Island and around the world. It means that we commit ourselves to unlearning colonial ways of seeing the world, and that settlers work to build healthy, non-extractive, non-tokenizing relationships with Indigenous peoples. It means that we reject false promises of nation-building and security that come at the expense of Indigenous sovereignty and wellbeing. It means embracing reparations, healing, and accountability, and understanding that Indigenous liberation is key to collective liberation. We again return to the words of abolitionist Fannie Lou Hamer: nobody’s free until everybody’s free.
Recently, many people from the For Our Kids network got a glimpse of collective liberation in action by participating in Draw The Line. On September 20, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in communities across so-called Canada, rallying “for people, peace, and planet.” While the Day of Action was spectacular and energizing, Draw The Line’s most significant legacy may be the community organizing that brought it to life. Indigenous communities, along with activists from the climate, anti-war, migrant rights, and labour movements, spent months building a non-hierarchical coalition for collective liberation. Thanks to this intentional, solidarity-based, and anti-colonial approach to organizing, our movements now have a robust infrastructure for advancing our shared struggles and building a better society for all.
The reciprocity and relationality that made Draw The Line possible are not new concepts; they are foundational to many of the Indigenous cultures that have existed on Turtle Island since time immemorial. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that residential schools sought to eradicate these worldviews – they have the potential to upend the colonial project.
Let us all honour the people, families, communities, and nations who bear the traumatic legacies of the residential school system. Let us all embrace our potential to upend the colonial project. Let us all take part in building a liberated world.
Resources
- Indigenous Climate Action - Honour Truth, Activate Reconciliation
- National Truth and Reconciliation Commission - Reports
- National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls - Final Report
- 8th Fire Rising - Indigenous-led effort to track and resist new wave of harmful legislation
- Land Back Online - free online course from Yellowhead Institute exploring ways Canada dispossesses Indigenous people of the land and the strategies communities are using to get it back
- The Witness Blanket - interactive art project featuring hundreds of stories and items reclaimed from residential schools, churches, government buildings and traditional and cultural structures from across Canada
- For Our Kids - Learn about decolonization
Resources for younger kids
- Spirit Bear TV - video adaptations of Cindy Blackstock's Spirit Bear book series
- First Nations Early Learning Collaborative - videos and art activities
- Warrior Kids podcast with Dr Pam Palmater - "5 Things to Know About September 30" episode talks about history of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
