This Orange Shirt Day, CHASI asked Shirley Hardman, UFV’s Senior Advisor of Indigenous Affairs to recommend resources about the annual event, and specifically those useful in taking action toward truth and reconciliation:
- Phyllis Webstad’s orangeshirtday.org contains a lot of information about the annual day of recognition of residential school system harm, including Phyllis’ story and the origin of the orange shirt. That includes teacher resources.
- The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO/FEEO) has a list of resources near the bottom of its Orange Shirt Day webpage with many resources, including Gord Downie’s Secret Path.
- Shirley also highly recommends Senator Murray Sinclair‘s words on Truth and Reconciliation.
- And Mohawk College has a list of resources as well, including websites of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada.
We would also like to direct people to UFV’s own Indigenous Affairs website, which is packed full of resources. In particular, the reading challenges and quizzes page links to a Truth and Reconciliation pledge, where participants commit to reading the TRC report (and can track and share their progress). Another great resource to meet the Truth and Reconciliation’s calls action and become educated about the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) is Ry Moran’s #NEXT150 Challenge, where users sign up and are issued new challenges each week. The goal is to read and understand the 46 articles of UNDRIP.