09/30/2026
Today marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day. This is a time to honour the victims of the Residential School System, to listen to the stories of Survivors, to reflect on the ongoing generational impacts of residential schools and other harmful colonial policies, and to recommit ourselves to the ongoing work of reconciliation.
As a church, we acknowledge the harms, both structural and individual, perpetrated against Indigenous people, families, and communities in the name of religion and cultural assimilation. We condemn the sin of racism and the failure of the church to see the dignity and value of Indigenous peoples and cultures.
We acknowledge that reconciliation does not just mean saying "sorry," but also restoring relationships that have been broken and trust that has been fractured. It means interrogating the ways that Indigenous people still suffer because of intergenerational trauma and festering systemic barriers. We see this in how almost 40 First Nations still lack clean drinking water, how First Nations people experience twice the poverty rates as non-Indigenous people, how Indigenous people are vastly overrepresented in the justice system, and how Indigenous women experience violence at a rate six times higher than non-Indigenous women.
No person, body, or government will solve these challenges alone. It takes all of us willing to do the work of listening, learning, being in conversation, advocating, acting, and above all, re-affirming that Every Child Matters.
