This Friday, September 30 is our country?s second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day. It?s meant for people to reflect on the history of residential schools, and the survivors that live on today.
Your child?s school might ask you to dress them in an orange shirt or an actual Orange Shirt Day shirt. And if you?re asking yourself where the right place is to buy one is, you?re not alone. It can be a tough thing to navigate. But if you hope to truly honour the original reasoning behind Orange Shirt Day, there are some questions you should ask yourself before you make the purchase.
If you?re buying the shirt from a for-profit corporation, is the company donating all, some, or none of the profits to appropriate charities" Is the company only talking about Canada?s genocidal past one day out of the year or is it an ongoing, year-round conversation" You may have considered buying a shirt from one of the hundreds of individuals selling them on personal online shops like Etsy. You?ll certainly find a multitude of designs, phrases and pricing, and indeed, this can be a beautiful means of support for the hundreds of thousands of Indigenous families who have been affected by the long-term impacts of residential schools. But even buying direct can be fraught, because while some people are giving all or some of the proceeds to proper charitable organizations that support Indigenous people and Residential School Survivors, there are also tho...