Each year, we honour both National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day on September 30th. This is a vital time of reflection on our collective past for those living and working on Indigenous lands now known as Canada, and locally the First Nations’ unceded traditional territories now collectively known as British Columbia.
National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is a call to action for all of us, it’s both a celebration of resilience, advancement, dynamism and the capacity-building work we all must do in solidarity with First Nations with long-term partnerships for mutual success. It also calls upon us to understand what is true, and to honour the children who never returned home and Survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities. Public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools is a vital component of the reconciliation process. Orange Shirt Day is an Indigenous-led grassroots commemorative day intended to raise awareness of the individual, family, and community inter-generational impacts of residential schools, and to promote the concept of “Every Child Matters”. The orange shirt is a symbol of the stripping away of culture, freedom, and self-esteem experienced by Indigenous children over generations.
On behalf of the province’s creative sector, we gratefully acknowledge the 200,000 Indigenous people living in B.C., including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities. The sector operates across the unceded homelands of 34 First Nations language and cultural groups, encompassing nearly 60 dialects and representing over 200 distinct First Nations in B.C. The creative industries are crucial in prioritizing, empowering, and foregrounding original Indigenous stories and those who have the right to tell them. Indigenous sovereignty and ownership of their stories are vital to the footprint of the creative industries in B.C.
