September 24, 2024: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Press Release

September 24, 2024

Today marks Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Each year, this day provides much needed space to remember the thousands of Indigenous children who died in residential schools across Canada as a direct result of abuse, neglect, and racism. It is also a day to remember families and survivors of the residential school system and to recognize the intergenerational impacts of residential schools.

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is also known as Orange Shirt Day, a reference to Phyllis Webstad’s story of wearing a beloved orange shirt her grandmother bought for her first day of school:

When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never wore it again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine! The colour orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing… [T]he feeling of worthlessness and insignificance, ingrained in me from my first day at the mission, affected the way I lived my life for many years.

The toll from the shameful legacy of residential schools is devastating. Indigenous communities continue to feel the effects of family separation, cultural assimilation, and trauma that resulted from the cruel and discriminatory practices of removing children from their communities and families and separating them from their languages and cultures. While the operation of residential schools in Canada is now in the past, their damaging effects continue to stain our present. We also recognize that residential schools were just one of many discriminatory policies targeted towards Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

This is why reconciliation is an ongoing and crucial pursuit. All of us in Alberta have a role to play in addressing past and current wrongs and in creating a province where all human rights are upheld. I urge all non-Indigenous people, organizations, businesses and other institutions to take an active role in the responsibility of reconciliation. We must understand how the atrocities of the past still linger today, and we must work to respond to the continuing effects of decades of systemic racism that Indigenous people have endured. In the spirit of reconciliation, we must work together to create a future where the Indigenous communities are recognized, respected, and valued, and reaffirm that every child matters.

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