Culture / Canada’s Inaugural National Day For Truth & Reconciliation Is An Overdue Acknowledgement Of Residential School Tragedies

Canada’s Inaugural National Day For Truth & Reconciliation Is An Overdue Acknowledgement Of Residential School Tragedies

Culture Sep 30, 2021

by Hina P. Ansari

Today on September 30th, Canada marks the first annual National Day For Truth & Reconciliation, a commemoration for the victims of the Residential School system that operated in Canada for over a century to strip Indigenous children of their culture and history.

Across the country there are numerous commemoration ceremonies recognizing the dark chapter in Canadian history and the related inter-generational trauma from Canadian Residential School system. The school system largely operated by the Catholic Church in conjunction with the Canadian government, forced families to send their Indigenous children (whom were seen as “savages”) to these schools in order to have their culture and history stripped from them as a way to assimilate into white Canadian society.

The conversation of recognition was sparked in late May of this year when a unmarked burial ground was discovered in Kamloops at the former location of Kamloops Indian Residential School. The burial space that was discovered revealed 215 children who were buried. Some were accounted for, but records of other remain to be found.

Canada's Inaugural National Day Of Truth & Reconciliation Is An Overdue Acknowledgement Of Residential School Tragedies — Canada’s Inaugural National Day Of Truth & Reconciliation Is An Overdue Acknowledgement Of Residential School Tragedies. The movement to acknowledge Canada’s dark history started in Kamloops when the first burial ground was discovered. Photo Credit: www.yahoo.com

Since then an active search for other unmarked burial grounds nationwide took place. To date more than 1300 children have been discovered.

National Day For Truth & Reconciliation was selected to take place on September 30th as it coincided with the already existing Orange Shirt Day, a movement to recognize the trauma that the residential school systems had on Indigenous children. Orange Shirt Day started in 2013 where it “Phyllis Webstad of Stswecem’c Xgat’tem Dog Creek First Nation, who wore a bright orange shirt given to her by her grandmother, on her first day at the St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School in B.C.. That shirt was immediately stripped from her, a symbolic action, reflecting the systematic elimination of Indigenous culture.

This official day of remembrance is a way to be able to continue to understand and remember the injustices that the Canadian government handed to the Indigenous community. The conversation started in May, and we hope that it will never end.

If you haven’t read our article about the Catholic Church’s involvement in the Residential School system, click here.

To learn more about the Truth & Reconciliation Committee from where this national day is named after, click here.

Main Image Photo Credit: www.cbc.ca

Hina P. Ansari

Author

Hina P. Ansari is a graduate from The University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario). Since then she has carved a successful career in Canada's national fashion-publishing world as the Entertainment/Photo Editor at FLARE Magazine, Canada's national fashion magazine. She was the first South Asian in...

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Canada’s Inaugural National Day For Truth & Reconciliation Is An Overdue Acknowledgement Of Residential School Tragedies

by Hina P. Ansari

Hina P. Ansari

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