Brian Gettler on Nostr: Today, many in #Canada wear orange shirts in remembrance of Indigenous children who ...

Today, many in #Canada wear orange shirts in remembrance of Indigenous children who attended residential schools, whether they survived or not. By its very nature, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation tends to evoke self-satisfaction among some. We remember so-called historical "dark chapters" and in so doing pat ourselves on the backs for our liberal plurastic values - we are good because we remember hard things. But history - and I say this as a historian who's worked on residential schools - is only ever partially about the past. It's also about the present and the futures we'd like to build. Wearing a certain shirt on a certain day can help us move towards a better future, but it can also just reinforce our feelings of moral superiority while failing to help anyone actually dealing with legacies of injustice. I don't have a solution. I just know that public displays of memory, especially memory involving the oppressed and marginalized, need to be a beginning not an end.