Orange Shirt Day: Home

Phyllis's Orange Shirt is an adaptaion of The Orange Shirt Story which was the best selling children's book in Canada for several weeks in September 2018(Book manager). This true story also inspired the movement of Orange Shirt Day which could become a federal statuatory holiday.When Phyllis was a little girl she was excited to go to residential school for the first time. Her Granny bought her a bright orange shirt that she loved and she wore it to school for her first day. When she arrived at school her bright orange shirt was taken away. This is both Phyllis Webstad's true story and the story behind Orange Shirt Day which is a day for us all to reflect upon the treatment of First Nations people and the message that 'Every Child Matters'. Adapted for ages 4-6.

Power through Testimony documents how survivors are remembering and reframing our understanding of residential schools in the wake of the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a forum for survivors, families, and communities to share their memories and stories with the Canadian public. The commission closed and reported in 2015, and this timely volume reveals what happened on the ground. Drawing on field research during the commission and in local communities, the contributors document how residential schools have been understood and represented by various groups and individuals over time; how survivors are undermining colonial narratives about residential schools; and how the churches and former school staff are receiving or resisting the "new" residential school story. Ultimately, Power through Testimony questions the power of the TRC to unsettle dominant colonial narratives about residential schools and transform the relationship between Indigenous people and Canadian society.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report designed to facilitate reconciliation between the Canadian state and Indigenous Peoples. Its call to honour treaty relationships reminds us that we are all treaty people -- including immigrants and refugees living in Canada. The contributors to this volume, many of whom are themselves immigrants and refugees, take up the challenge of imagining what it means for immigrants and refugees to live as treaty people. Through essays, personal reflections and poetry, the authors explore what reconciliation is and what it means to live in relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Speaking from their personal experience -- whether from the education and health care systems, through research and a community garden, or from experiences of discrimination and marginalization -- contributors share their stories of what reconciliation means in practice. They write about building respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples, respecting Indigenous Treaties, decolonizing our ways of knowing and acting, learning the role of colonized education processes, protecting our land and environment, creating food security and creating an intercultural space for social interactions. Perhaps most importantly, Reconciliation in Practice reminds us that reconciliation is an ongoing process, not an event, and that decolonizing our relationships and building new ones based on understanding and respect is empowering for all of us -- Indigenous, settler, immigrant and refugee alike.

BC Book Prize, Non-Fiction, Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Finalist) Burt Award for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature: Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Third Prize winner) Like thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. Perhaps the most symbolically potent strategy used to alienate residential school children was addressing them by assigned numbers only--not by the names with which they knew and understood themselves. In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family--from substance abuse to suicide attempts--and eloquently articulates her own path to healing. Number One comes at a time of recognition--by governments and society at large--that only through knowing the truth about these past injustices can we begin to redress them.