Allison Hanes: Orange shirts are a reminder of the work that remains on reconciliation

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Kids across the country are wearing orange shirts to class Monday, to remember the generations of Indigenous children who were torn from their families, communities and cultures, forced to attend residential schools and, in many cases, horribly abused or killed.

Monday is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, when Canadians confront a dark stain on our history. Residential schools were a cultural genocide that lasted more than a century and the effects continue to reverberate. Most Indigenous people alive today are either survivors, the children of survivors, the grandchildren of survivors or all of the above. But we’ve only become more aware of this painful legacy in the past decade, since a national roving commission gathered heartbreaking testimonials and called us all to action.

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Besides reflecting on this tragedy, Monday is also an opportunity to learn about Indigenous culture and customs. Countless events are taking place in school gyms and on college campuses. Some already have. On Thursday, Plains Cree singer-songwriter Aurora Finkle performed at John Rennie High School in Pointe-Claire. On Friday, Concordia University hosted a screening of the film Honour to Senator Murray Sinclair, about the chair of Canada’s earth-shifting commission on residential schools, and a discussion featuring director Alanis Obomsawin.

The idea of wearing orange shirts was inspired by Phyllis (Jack) Webstad, who told of how the brand new T-shirt her grandmother bought for her was stripped away from her as a six-year-old child on her first day of residential school in B.C. Now children across the country wear this hue as a reminder of all that Indigenous youth lost in a cruel and damaging system. It’s a colourful and simple way to show that every child matters.

Orange will be everywhere Monday — and not just on clothing. Tim Hortons is selling doughnuts with orange sprinkles, with proceeds going to Indigenous charities, like the New Pathways Foundation, a non-profit that offers camps, sporting activities, internships and scholarships for First Nations youth in Quebec.

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Over the years, we’ve become much better as a society at the symbolic gestures of atonement. But we still have a lot to do on the big issues — the systemic problems, large and small, that continue to create inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

In Kanesatake, the illegal dumping of potentially contaminated debris from Montreal-area construction sites is poisoning Mohawk territory, and potentially seeping into the Lake of Two Mountains. Government authorities have stood idly by for years, despite attempts by whistleblowers and community leaders to sound the alarm.

Gutsy reporting by journalists, especially Christopher Curtis at The Rover, has helped expose the extent of the dumping — and explain the complex web of governance issues, criminal infiltration, exploitation and construction-industry corruption behind it. With activists in Kanesatake and Oka stepping up protests, police and the Quebec Environment Ministry are finally taking action. But so much damage has already been done.

In Quebec, the protection of the French language is a priority backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in public money. But in Kahnawake, the Sharing Our Stories project to save the fragile Mohawk language and document the knowledge of elders valiantly runs on charitable contributions and a shoestring budget.

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Laws put in place to bolster French are also unfairly penalizing Indigenous college students by requiring them to fulfil the same French course requirements as francophones or allophones, even at English CEGEPs. This is an added barrier to higher education for Indigenous youth, given that many have French as their third language, having grown up in communities that skew toward English or that lacked access to French instruction. Yet their pleas for an exemption have been brushed aside by the Quebec government, forcing many to move to other provinces, even farther away from their traditional communities.

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation was declared a federal statutory holiday in 2021, which means many banks and government services are closed. But it is not officially recognized in Quebec. Consequently, Sept. 30 is a mandatory attendance day at Quebec public schools, where this year’s head count determines next year’s funding. So many parents face a quandary if they had been hoping to take their children out of school to attend commemorative events. The timing shows a blind spot and a lack of sensitivity to the importance of the occasion.

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As Quebec studies Bill 69, aimed at securing responsible governance of the province’s energy sector into the future, Indigenous leaders are calling on the government to respect the “nation to nation” relationship so many politicians pay lip service to.

Quebec’s vast network of relatively clean hydroelectricity gives us strategic advantages in a world transitioning to clean energy. But Indigenous groups have bitter memories of their lands being flooded and their people never properly compensated to build the dams that have generated so much wealth. There are signs of progress: Hydro-Québec signed an agreement with Kahnawake to share the profits of a major new power line to New York City. But Indigenous groups want stronger guarantees First Nations will share in the benefits of resource extraction as Hydro expands to meet growing demand.

On Saturday, there was a rally at Place du Canada in memory of Joyce Echaquan, the Atikamekw woman who live-streamed medical staff’s verbal abuse of her as she lay dying in a Joliette hospital.

Echaquan’s death shocked Quebec in 2020. Although Premier François Legault apologized and deplored the racist attitude of her tormentors, he has denied it’s an example of systemic racism. This despite the findings of a coroner, who said it was a textbook case, and the foreshadowing of the 2019 Viens Report, on the mistreatment of Indigenous people in Quebec, which predated Echaquan’s death but may well have anticipated it.

So as we wear orange Monday to reflect on past transgressions against Indigenous people, we must also confront the unfinished business of reconciliation.

ahanes@postmedia.com

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