When All The Orange Shirts Go Home
What do we do when the orange shirts have all gone home?
Today is October 17, 2024.
It’s been 1 month since the span of police and RCMP killed 6 Indigenous people across Canada in 11 days (was it more?).
It has been 4 years since Canada declared September 30 the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
5 years since the release of the final report and their 231 calls for justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Girls & 2SLGBTQQIA* people.
8 years since Manitoba declared October 4th a day of action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2 Spirited.
9 years since the final report of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission and their 94 calls to Action were released.
10 years since Tina Fontaine.
It has been 23 years since the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples delivered their final report and 440 recommendations.
It has been 33 years since the Manitoba Aboriginal Justice Inquiry completed and delivered their 296 recommendations to improve justice, child welfare and many more institutions to improve the health and well being of Indigenous people.
We could go on.
But if we stop there that makes 1,061 recommendations that have been put forward by commissions and inquiries over the last 30+ years. Thank you to my sister Trina for pointing that out to me recently. How many people have read them? How many have taken these calls to Action and justice to heart? How are you making Truth and reconciliation real in your life and in your circle of influence at work and in the community? These recommendations aren’t that different from commission to commission, even from decade to decade. There has been progress but it is not enough. There are still too many people asking Indigenous people what they should do. We have told you time and time again; in reports, in person and in the news headlines, when our relatives lose their lives too soon in predictable and preventable ways.
I see Indigenous people taking the lead every day. I see my relatives working to get healthy, overcome addiction and harmful substance use, find housing, get their kids back, live a healthy life, work to reform harmful systems, create new systems to replace the ones that aren’t working; I see my relatives loving themselves and our community back to life. But we can’t do it alone.
We feel the love on Orange Shirt Day once a year on September 30. But only 5 days later many of those Orange shirts don’t show up when we need them for the day of action for MMIWG on October 4. Worse, the orange shirts have gone home and some come help when the police are still killing us, our kids are still being taken, our relatives can’t find housing, Healthcare ignores us to death and so much more.
Orange Shirt Day has to be more than Orange T Shirts and Hashtags. We have to center survivors and intergenerational survivors, not just once a year but all the time. We have to dismantle systems that harm children today and then connect them with their own family or a family of choice that can give them love and support. We have to care for the children who did make it home who today are adults and elders who often struggle with mental health, homelessness, addiction, racism and neglect.
Lets let our actions do the talking so the survivors can still feel our love when the marches are over and the orange t shirts go home. We have to act today while they are still here as many knowledge keepers and survivors are sick, old and passing away each day. I know people want to take action to help but often don’t know what to do. Read those reports and recommendations. Then get out there and do whatever you can to make a better life for your Indigenous friends and neighbours. We have many systems to choose from and many opportunities to take action.
We will go farther and faster if we go together.
