The big call to action that I think Orange Shirt Day deserves is the need for non-Indigenous people to show up for events and experiences that encourage learning and connection regarding the impact of residential schools.
Before September 30th became a statutory holiday, Indigenous people and allies showed their support, compassion and grief for residential school survivors by donning an orange shirt in the workplace, in the classroom, and in various public spaces — There was a feeling of solidarity and a commitment to change shared between diverse groups of people in these regulated spaces. It was an intentional visual disruption that happened simply by folks wearing highlighter orange in the familiar spaces we inhabit.
In some ways, the stat holiday has diluted the cause. It scatters people from places where they have increased influence of change (like classrooms or workplaces with people you are peers with). It allows the Prime Minister to go on a surfing holiday in Tofino. It allows people to opt-in or opt-out depending on their interest-level. Sometimes I wonder how the stat holiday has pacified a needed tension of representation regarding residential schools but also Indigenous injustice overall.
I think it’s crucial for non-Indigenous people to reflect on their involvement, or their ambivalence, regarding Orange Shirt Day. And I think it’s okay to feel uncomfortable about your positionality about it as a non-Indigenous person. That friction is so needed, it’s what the whole day is about. Overcoming those feelings to show up in whatever way you can.
As Patrick Wolf has said, settler-colonialism is a “structure not an event”. It is not a time, date or place you can memorize in a history book. No, it is a structure that wears many faces. Learning to recognize this structure allows people to call-it out when it appears in different places or as a twisted adaptation of its original format.
Orange Shirt Day isn’t simply an acknowledgment of residential schools as a historical passage of time. It directly relates to current issues such as the ongoing impacts on Indigenous child welfare in foster care systems; the ongoing violence and murders of MMIWG2S+; grief and trauma recovery; incarcerated survivors who require multi-faceted support; and, the need for harm reduction services and health care models for people coping with addictions. There is a need to recognize how residential schools is a formula that is being re-used and adapted to continue the harm and elimination of Indigenous people.
If settler-colonialism is a structure and not an event, then the question that I ask my non-Indigenous friends is: Are you living peacefully in that “house” today? Are you content under the roof of this structure?
Or are you part of the effort to deconstruct that house to build something else? Do you take the time to acknowledge that not everyone lives safely under that roof? And if so, what do you plan to do about it?
My deepest love for all of the lost children. For all survivors. Especially my mother, aunties, and uncles.
