After The Orange T-Shirts

Canada will be wearing orange on Friday 30 September, to observe National Truth and Reconciliation Day. It’s big money for all sectors of the economy. Just think of retailers that learned their lesson last year when they didn’t have a single orange T-shirt in stock. This year, they ordered them well in advance. They will make a killing, for sure.

The National Truth and Reconciliation Day is Canada’s admission of guilt. The Indian Act failed indigenous children by removing them from their land to residential schools, where they were ‘civilized.’ Cancel culture was the knife. Strip them of their identity. Most residential school survivors will explain to you why they have English and Christian names. 

The Indian Act regarded kids as sub-human. Roman Catholic priests who ran most of these schools, buried them as such. In May 2021, hidden graves of 215 Indian children from the old Kamloops Catholic Residential School in British Columbia, were discovered.

That is why orange T-shirts, Canada will wear tomorrow have the message, ‘every child matters.’ Indigenous kids that were forcibly removed from their parents and taken to these schools, did not matter.

Do we have to be reminded that every child matters? It’s natural. Kids are so cute. They run away from parents in shopping malls and bump into you. Then they stare at you trying to figure out your secret misdemeanors.

Kids did not matter in the British Empire. Kids in Africa were black, therefore naturally dirty. Indigenous kids in Canada were deemed slow and did not understand basic English. Did colonizers understand Cree, Dene, Ojibwe, Inuktut and thousands of other languages that lived in the land they invaded?

Every child matters must not live on T-shirts only. We’ll take them off when we come back from the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Day rally, on 30 September. Every child matters therefore, we should stop pointing fingers and saying: those kids.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.