The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (sometimes shortened to T&R Day) (NDTR; French: Journée nationale de la vérité et de la réconciliation), originally and still colloquially known as Orange Shirt Day (French: Jour du chandail orange), is a Canadian day of memorial to recognize the atrocities and multi-generational effects of the Canadian Indian residential school system. It occurs every year on September 30.
As of March 2023, NDTR is a statutory holiday for:
federal government employees and private-sector employees to whom the Canada Labour Code applies;
provincial government employees in Alberta, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.
all workers in British Columbia, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, and Yukon.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to document the effects of the residential school system, ran from 2008 to 2015, and concluded that the attempt to forcefully assimilate Indigenous communities was a cultural genocide.
The residential school system was created as a civilizing mission to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Euro-Canadian culture.
Orange Shirt Day was first established as a day of observance in 2013. The use of an orange shirt as a symbol was inspired by the accounts of Phyllis Jack Webstad, whose personal clothing—including a new orange shirt—was taken from her during her first day of residential schooling, and never returned. This was common practice in all Canadian Christian schools throughout the times residential schools were in operation with most schools being shut down in the 1970s. Uniform requirements were common in all Canadian schools until the 1970s the students were expected to focus on further education and unique outfits were considered distractions. The orange shirt is thus used as a symbol of the forced assimilation of Indigenous children that the residential school system enforced.
The day was elevated to a statutory holiday for federal workers and workers in federally-regulated workplaces by the Parliament of Canada in 2021, and named "National Day for Truth and Reconciliation", in light of the claims of over 1,000 unmarked graves near former residential school sites.
Indian residential school system
Shortly after Confederation in 1867, the ministers in the new Cabinet of Canada inherited the responsibility of advising the Crown on the treaties signed between it and the First Nations of Canada. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald was faced with a country with disparate cultures and identities and wanted to forge a new Canadian identity to unite the country and ensure its survival. It was Macdonald's goal to absorb the First Nations into the general population of Canada and extinguish their culture.The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change." John A. Macdonald, 1887 In 1878, he commissioned Nicholas Flood Davin to write a report about residential schools in the United States. One year later, Davin reported that only residential schools could separate aboriginal children from their parents and culture and cause them "to be merged and lost" within the nation. Davin argued that the government should work with the Christian churches to open these schools.
Beginning in 1883, the government began funding Indian residential schools across Canada, which were run primarily by the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church; but also included the United Church of Canada, the Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church. When the separation of children from their parents was resisted, the government responded by making school attendance compulsory in 1894 and empowered the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to seize children from reserves and bring them to the residential schools. When parents came to take their children away from the schools, the pass system was created, banning Indigenous people from leaving their reserve without a pass from an Indian agent.
Conditions at the schools were rough, as schools were underfunded and the infectious disease of tuberculosis was rampant. Over the course of the system's existence—more than a century long—approximately 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada details deaths of approximately 3,200 children in residential schools, representing a 2.1% mortality rate. However, Justice Murray Sinclair, the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission later stated that they only included deaths of children that they had records for and that the true number of deaths could be as high as 6,000.
Most of the recorded student deaths at residential schools took place before the 1950s. The most common cause of death was tuberculosis, which was also a common cause of death among children across Canada at that time; but, students also died from other causes, including other diseases, fire, accident, drowning, and hypothermia, some of which occurred while running away from school. Some residential schools had mortality rates of 30% or more. The mortality rates at residential schools were much higher than the mortality rates of Canadian children as a whole. Many deaths were the result of neglect, as schools frequently denied basic medical care or assistance to their students until just before they died; in many cases, school staff did not bother searching for missing children until the next day.
Dr. Peter Bryce reported to the Department of Indian Affairs in 1897 about the high student mortality rates at residential schools due to tuberculosis. Bryce's report was leaked to journalists, prompting calls for reform from across the country. Despite this public outcry, Bryce's recommendations were largely ignored. Duncan Campbell Scott, the deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, who supported the assimilation policy, wrote in 1914, "the system was open to criticism. Insufficient care was exercised in the admission of children to the schools. The well-known predisposition of Indians to tuberculosis resulted in a very large percentage of deaths among the pupils."
Many schools did not communicate the news of the deaths of students to the students' families, burying the children in unmarked graves; in one-third of recorded deaths, the names of the students who had died were not recorded. In some schools, sexual abuse was common and students were forced to work to help raise money for the school. Students were beaten for speaking their indigenous languages.
By the 1950s, the government began to relax restrictions on the First Nations of Canada and began to work towards shutting the schools down. The government seized control of the residential schools from the churches in 1969 and, by the 1980s, only a few schools remained open, with the last school, Kivalliq Hall, located in Rankin Inlet, closing in 1996.
In 1986, the United Church of Canada apologized for its role in the residential school system. The Anglican church followed suit in 1992. Some Catholic organizations have apologized for their role in the residential school system and, in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI expressed sorrow for the experiences of the residential school survivors, but the Roman Catholic Church delayed a formal apology for its role in the residential school system. In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked the Pope to issue an apology over its role in the Indian residential school system. In 2022, Pope Francis travelled to Canada, where, at the site of a former residential school and in front of Indigenous representatives, he formally apologized for the Catholic Church's role in the residential school system.