I’m Wearing An Orange Shirt Today. But Why?
I’m wearing an orange shirt. Today,specifically. You might wonder why if you aren’t from where I live (Canada). I’m sure I’ll see lots of other orange-shirted people out and about today.
Why? Because today is the second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The first one was last year, after some horrific and gruesome discoveries in my Canadian province of British Columbia last summer — and then later, elsewhere in other parts of Canada. Hundreds of graves of indigenous children.
Canada has a dark history. As many countries and places no doubt do, due to practices of one culture against another.
This part of our history in particular has to do with the treatment of Indigenous peoples of Canada (aka First Nations/Native). The Catholic church ran what was called ‘residential schools’ (think permanent boarding schools) — where they took (stole) indigenous children from their families and taught them Westernized culture, language, religion etc. . Trying to erase away and destroy their own culture, which western society didn’t agree with.
Horrific, right? And as you can imagine, there was lots of mistreatment and abuse of these children and young people. And, it turns out after a horrifying discovery of many, many graves (it started out with discovering 215 graves) of children on the grounds…
