09/30/2026
National day of truth & reconciliation🧡 Our beautiful member Tanecia has graciously shared what this day means to her. She also shared an acknowledgement with us that we will be playing before classes today. May we all continue to learn, unlearn & amplify the voices of all of the impacted peoples around us⬇️
Orange Shirt Day feels personal to me.
My grandfather is a Residential School Survivor. Our relationship has never been particularly close, and as I have grown older, I have often wondered how much of that distance may have been shaped by the things he experienced and carried with him.
The impacts of residential schools did not end when children came home. They found their way into families, relationships and generations, sometimes in ways that are difficult to name or fully understand.
As an Indigenous woman, I carry that history with me, but I also carry hope.
I think about connection—how we come together, how we care for one another, how we learn to listen to our bodies and honour the space we occupy within them. I think about the way we gather here at Oxygen, moving, breathing, sweating, resting and reminding one another that we don’t have to do everything alone.
There is something deeply familiar to me in that sense of community. In knowing that we are connected not only to ourselves, but to one another, to the land beneath us, and to the generations who came before and those still to come.
For me, Orange Shirt Day is a time to remember the children who were taken, the families and communities who continue to carry those impacts, and the Survivors whose lives hold stories we may never fully know.
But it is also a time to look forward.
To imagine a future where Indigenous children grow up rooted in who they are, surrounded by culture, community and belonging. A future where the land is cared for, relationships are honoured, and there is room for all of us to learn how to be better connected to one another.
That is the hope I want to carry today—not simply remembering what happened, but making space for what can be different.
🧡 Every Child Matters.
