Truth and Reconciliation doesn't stop after 24 hours. It doesn't stop at a ballot box. It often dies at a ballot box.
Awareness is only ever a first step, and the ones who should be listening rarely ever do.
It doesn't mean the gesture is meaningless, only that it's a first step, and they allow us to take that step because they think we'll be too afraid to keep walking. Actually gaining ground against oppression is illegal.
From 2008 - 2015, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard testimony from residential schools Survivors, documented atrocities committed and intergenerational effects of the system, and filed a report recommending 94 Calls to Action.
Wore the same orange shirt today as yesterday. I only have one and I thought, "What am I going to do now?" Then I realized that these kids had their entire childhood stripped from them and lived with trauma for the rest of their lives, if they even survived the ordeal; and I'm fussing about wearing the same shirt 2 days in a row.
My dad intentionally did not get me status. He hid from me that we are Mi’kmaq until about fifteen years ago when I found out his sister is Mi’kmaw. He was trying to save me from what had happened to him and his siblings, and you know, maybe he did. Because I was never taken away and incarcerated in one of those loathsome residential “schools”. The last residential school closed three years after I graduated university. He only opened up to me about his mom being Mi’kmaw a year ago. I know almost nothing about Mi’kmaq culture. The very little I do know comes from a Mi’kmaw elder who prepared me to go through a week of ceremony shortly after the lockdowns. Please consider donating to the Indian Residential School Survivors’ Society. You could also look through the #IndigenousMutualAid tag and find folks who can really use your help. #ResidentialSchool#genocide#Indigedon#OrangeShirtDay#IndigenousMastodon#TruthAndReconciliationDayhttps://www.irsss.ca
The orange shirt represents a lot more than just a shirt. It represents everything that was forcibly taken away from these children at Residential Schools.
A beautiful bright orange shirt was one girl's prized possession, violently stripped from her, but it was nothing compared to the life that was stolen from her that very day.
Moved this sign from our home to the medical office. The history of colonialism in Canada, missing and murdered Indigenous women & girls, residential schools, and ongoing systemic racism - including in healthcare - requires more than #OrangeShirtDay.
Please find a few mins to learn, share or discuss the reality of ongoing #colonialism & ongoing inter-generational trauma & violence as we work towards truth & reconciliation.
Just went to Tyendinaga and picked up some herbs and an Every Child Matters tshirt. Please, if you want to wear an orange shirt for orange shirt day, buy it from Indigenous people and not from Amazon or some department store. No one should be profiting from genocide. All that money should be going to the survivors and their descendants. #Indigenous#EveryChildMatters#ResidentialSchool#IndianBoardingSchools#OrangeShirtDay