09/30/2026
🧡 EVERY CHILD MATTERS. 🧡
Today is Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
Today we honour the Survivors of residential schools and remember the children who never came home.
As of 2026, investigations have identified at least 2,971 potential unmarked graves or burials at 31 former residential school sites across Canada.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has documented more than 4,000 children who died within the residential school system. In 2025, another 1,143 names of children were verified for the National Student Memorial Register.
And we still do not know the full number.
Many former residential school sites have not been fully searched. Records remain incomplete. Children remain missing. Families and Nations are still waiting for answers.
Orange Shirt Day cannot simply be about wearing orange.
It means listening to Survivors.
Learning whose land you live on.
Understanding the Treaties.
Challenging residential-school denialism.
Supporting Nations searching for their children.
Demanding institutions release the records communities need.
The last federally operated residential school closed in 1996. This is not ancient history. Survivors are still here.
2,971 potential unmarked burials.
More than 4,000 documented deaths.
Thousands of children.
Thousands of families.
And the search is not finished.
They were children.
They had names.
They had families.
They were loved.
They should have come home.
🧡 Every Child Matters.
🧡 Every Survivor Matters.
🧡 The children who never came home matter.
Today we wear orange.
Tomorrow, we keep doing the work.
