National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
| National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Journée nationale de la vérité et de la réconciliation | |
|---|---|
Banners advertising Orange Shirt Day flying in Williams Lake, BC – a city located within T'exelc (Williams Lake First Nation territory) | |
| Also called | Orange Shirt Day T&R Day |
| Type | National |
| Significance | National day to recognize the effect of the Canadian Indian residential school system |
| Date | September 30 |
| Frequency | Annual |
| First time | 2013 (Orange Shirt Day) 2021 (National Day for Truth and Reconciliation) |
| Started by | Phyllis Webstad |
| Related to | National Indigenous Peoples Day |
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 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.
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. 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.