September 30, 2025

Today is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day. It is a day to remember that Every Child Matters.

This day exists because of the profound injustices committed against Indigenous children in Canada. For generations, children were forcibly removed from their families, placed in residential schools, and subjected to abuse, neglect, and systemic attempts to erase their culture, language, and identity. Families were torn apart. Entire communities still carry the pain and trauma from those policies.

It’s important to hold this truth with respect. Indigenous Peoples continue to lead the call for recognition, justice, and healing.

Echoes in the Present

When I reflect on my son’s situation, I can’t ignore the similarities. My son has disabilities and complex medical needs. Instead of being supported to remain at home with the people who love him and know how to care for him, he has been drawn into the same machinery of government control.

The pattern is disturbingly familiar:

Families are denied the supports they need to keep their children safe at home. When parents advocate too loudly, the system intervenes—not with help, but with removal. Children are placed in environments that don’t truly understand or meet their needs.

The legacy of separating Indigenous children from their families may not look the same today, but the logic hasn’t disappeared. It has shifted. Where once the target was primarily Indigenous families, now children with disabilities are increasingly caught in the same cycle of displacement under the guise of “protection.”

Honoring History Without Erasure

I want to be clear: I am not collapsing or erasing histories. The experiences of Indigenous Peoples are unique, specific, and must be acknowledged on their own terms. The violence of residential schools and the Sixties Scoop cannot and should not be compared away.

But I see patterns. I see how systems that once devastated Indigenous families have not been dismantled—they have adapted, taking aim at new vulnerable groups while still disproportionately harming Indigenous families today.

Recognizing these echoes is not about appropriating Indigenous pain. It is about seeing how the same structures of control continue to harm children and families, so that we do not allow history to keep repeating itself in new forms.

What “Every Child Matters” Means

Every child matters means honoring the memory of Indigenous children whose lives and futures were stolen.

It also means ensuring no child—whether Indigenous, disabled, or otherwise vulnerable—is forced to grow up without the love and safety of family because the system failed to support them.

It means my son matters. It means your child matters. It means Indigenous children matter—yesterday, today, and always.

If truth and reconciliation are to be real, then so must the commitment to justice for all children.

#EveryChildMatters #TruthAndReconciliation #OrangeShirtDay #NationalDayForTruthAndReconciliation

#IndigenousRights #ResidentialSchools #NeverForget #Reconciliation #HonourTheChildren

#DisabilityJustice #DisabilityRights #ComplexNeeds #MedicalComplexKids #CareNotSeparation

#FamilyFirst #KeepFamiliesTogether #ChildrenBelongAtHome #StopTheCycle

#HumanRights #SystemicChange #SocialJustice #EndTheCycle