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<\/a>\u201cOne of the calls to action that was taken on by the college was to not have the Indigenous department be the ones to bring awareness, because we as individuals are so deeply affected by this day and our own lived experiences in history, so as Indigenous people we are all very sensitive to the day,\u201d she says. \u201cIt, in the past, has been challenging to be the educators about this day, given the so very personal history that is around not only Indigenous individuals but communities and events, such as the reveals of finding the remains of our loved ones who turned out to be missing in the era of residential schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Vallee says that the result of this is that attendees will learn about Orange Shirt Day from \u201cperhaps a less Indigenous view but perhaps the same important historic values of what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOrange Shirt Day doesn\u2019t need to be a conversation held just within Indigenous communities,\u201d says La Vallee. \u201cCertainly the caregivers of those residential schools were certainly not Indigenous. Not that it is the non-Indigenous colleague\u2019s role to field that information, but it is a milestone for non-Indigenous communities to be discussing Orange Shirt Day outside of the experience of Indigenous peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Vallee says that it\u2019s important to attend events like this to bring awareness to the harms of the past in an attempt to ensure they don\u2019t happen again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndigenous students know why it\u2019s important to attend,\u201d she says. \u201cThose values would have to be found within the students themselves, but of course we encourage that the attitudes that prevailed through the residential school era no longer exist… So while I think Indigenous students are determined to not have anything like this happen again\u2014that\u2019s a resolve that we as Indigenous people all have: this will never happen again\u2014I think for the non-Indigenous student, the awareness of harmful attitudes and perhaps historic harmful attitudes never get repeated.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Vallee says that people should be gentle and respectful when talking about these subjects with Indigenous communities and members, specifically with Indigenous elders, as the subject of residential schools isn\u2019t something that everyone is emotionally capable of discussing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Indigenous elder that\u2019s sitting on the bus, you know, if you\u2019re curious, there\u2019s a whole big internet, and the topic is so personal that not everyone is equipped to talk about it, not everyone is emotionally capable of having words to the depths of this experience. It\u2019s an event to explore internally, within the person, Indigenous or non-Indigenous. I would just encourage tact when hoping to get into conversations about Orange Shirt Day, make sure there\u2019s an openness and a consent. If it\u2019s in depth, I would hope that the person being talked to about Orange Shirt Day, if Indigenous, would have some emotional care and emotional support around. You can\u2019t just open up traumas and then, \u2018Okay, I\u2019m done,\u2019 and leave that elder to put themselves back together… It\u2019s a depth that has to be respected and cared about, in conversation and in deed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Monday, September 29, Camosun College will host its annual Orange Shirt Day ceremonies at the Lansdowne campus. Morning workshops will run from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm at Na\u2019tsa\u2019maht and the Sherri Bell Hall in Wilna Thomas, and the ceremony takes place at 1:30 pm at Na\u2019tsa\u2019maht. Last year, the English department spearheaded the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,338],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-september-17-2025"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27191,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27181\/revisions\/27191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}