Annually, September 30th marks a reminder of the painful legacies of residential schools.

In 2008, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established as a result of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class-action settlement in Canada to date. The involved parties established the commission to document the impacts of residential schools on Indigenous people and to bring this part of history to light for a Canadian public who were largely in the dark. 

Residential schools are a dark reality of Canada’s history and are just one of the many assimilation tactics used historically by Canadian institutions to oppress Indigenous Peoples. Operating for about 160 years between the 1830s and 1996, these institutions predate Canada’s confederation. Over 150,000 students are estimated to have been enrolled nationally.

Actual education in these schools was kept to a minimum. The curriculum was basic and largely impractical to students and taught in a language foreign to them by generally underqualified staff. Intended for assimilation, the residential school system often forced students away from their families, stripped them of their possessions, and prevented them from speaking their language or taking part in traditional practices. In some schools, students were forced to do manual labour, while in others, they were forced to participate in nutritional experiments. 

Many students were physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. Over 4,100 students are officially recorded as having died during their time at these schools, with estimates positing that 6,000 was the actual number of deaths.

After six years of travelling across Canada, hearing from 6,500 witnesses, holding seven national education events, and collecting over five million records to be archived, the TRC’s work to document the history of residential schools culminated in 2015 with its final report, notably containing 94 Calls to Action to “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation.” 

The first 42 of these are Legacy calls, aimed at amending the impacts of colonial violence still felt today, while the 52 Calls to Action outline reconciliation actions. Most of these calls target the federal government but they also call upon provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, broadcasting agencies, universities, the church, and other Canadian institutions to take initiative.

Amongst these reconciliation Calls to Action was number eighty:

“We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, to establish, as a statutory holiday, a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honour Survivors, their families, and communities, and ensure that public commemoration of the history and legacy of residential schools remains a vital component of the reconciliation process.”

The first Truth and Reconciliation Day was observed in 2021 after Bill C-5 was passed unanimously by parliament in June of that year. The date was chosen to coincide with Orange Shirt Day, a movement which started in 2013 in response to Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation member and residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad’s stories of trauma from her time in the school system when she was six years old, including painful memories of staff taking her brand new orange shirt her grandma had gifted her, never to be returned. 

The motion to include Truth and Reconciliation Day as a statutory holiday was swiftly passed by Canada’s legislative assembly in 2021, following the discovery of over 215 suspected unmarked graves outside Kamloops Indian Residential School in May. The bill was fast-tracked a day after the revelation by the House of Commonsand passed into royal assent by the Senate six days later. This efficient motion towards a reconciliation is an exception, not the rule.

In December 2023, researchers Dr. Eva Jewell and Dr. Ian Mosby at the Yellowhead Institute in their yearly Calls to Action Accountability Status Update report estimated that only 13 of the 94 Calls to Action could be considered completed, meaning that they have been fully implemented nationally by all organizations that the TRC referenced. Just three of these were Legacy calls that address modern structural violence faced by Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

 During the five years from 2019 to 2023, that the researchers published their reports, they tracked a total of seven newly completed Calls to Action. Three of these, including the assent of Bill C-5 to create Truth and Reconciliation Day, were completed within three weeks in response to the discovery of the suspected graves in Kamloops, which had sparked international outcry. This represents the highest number of completions in a single calendar year within the five years that the Yellowhead Institute tracked.  

In 2015, then soon-to-be prime minister Justin Trudeau affirmed the Liberal Party’s “unwavering support for the TRC’s recommendations,” and called on the Government of Canada “to take immediate action to implement them.” 

Jewell and Mosby have since discontinued their accountability report, noting that “there is a limit to how much we can analyze nothing.” 

In her 2024 brief A Decade of Disappointment: Reconciliation & the System of a Crown,  Dr. Jewell describes how the revelation of these suspected unmarked graves and the resulting international outcry led to the symbolic “Reconciliation Dial” being cranked to the max as the federal government and Canadian public was forced to reckon with the brutality of residential schools. This begs the question – how traumatic and shocking of a revelation is required to actually catalyze reconciliation action at a national level?

Although September 30th has already passed, take some time to reflect on what it means to you. Truth and Reconciliation Day isn’t just another day off – it represents a commitment to reflect and reconcile. It is one of 94 Calls to Action that the Canadian public has been called to, and one of only 13 that have actually been fulfilled, so Canadians should make good use of it. 

While it is valid to criticize Canadian institutions for failing to adequately implement the TRC’s recommendations, it is still the collective responsibility of Canadians to make completed Calls to Action count. This includes using Truth and Reconciliation day to actually further reconciliation by learning, volunteering, and advocating. Students may not have much decision-making power in Canadian institutions, but they are still part of them and are more than capable of influencing change. 

Listening to Indigenous voices to guide you, use your voice, your vote ,and your dollar to tell the people in charge that 13 out of 94 isn’t good enough.