A reflection for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Confession: I only learned about this campaign this year and immediately felt that particular mix of “how did I not know this existed” and “well, better late than never.” So here it is, passing it along in case you didn’t know about it either.

What is One Day’s Pay?

One Day’s Pay is a grassroots campaign launched on Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2021. It mobilizes settlers and non-Indigenous people across the country to meaningfully recognize the tragic history and ongoing legacy of residential schools, and to honour survivors, their families, and their communities. It’s guided by The Circle on Philanthropy, a national Indigenous-led organization working to redistribute wealth and strengthen Indigenous-led infrastructure. Money goes directly to the profiled organizations as an act of responsibility, repair, and reciprocity. I’d encourage you to give generously and abundantly, and to skip asking for a charitable tax receipt this September 30th. Many of the most vital Indigenous-led projects and movements aren’t eligible for charitable status, or choose not to seek it. Don’t let that be the reason your support doesn’t reach them.

Where your day’s pay goes this year

  • Sacred Earth — an Indigenous-led non-profit advancing a Just Transition: climate solutions and clean energy infrastructure centred on Indigenous rights, healing justice, education and training, and policy and advocacy — moving toward ecological balance for human and non-human kin alike.
  • Clan Mothers Healing Village & Knowledge Centre — providing long-term, land-based healing programs for Indigenous women and two-spirit relatives who carry multigenerational systemic trauma, violence, sexual exploitation, and trafficking, with skills-based training toward real, sustainable employment.
  • Stqeeye’ Learning Society — an Indigenous-led non-profit on Saltspring Island, in the traditional territory of the Quw’utsun Peoples, restoring and protecting the waters of Xwaaqw’um while reconnecting Elders and youth through land-based learning, cultural knowledge-sharing, and food sovereignty.

Three different paths, one throughline: Indigenous-led, on Indigenous terms.

Why this, and not just an apology?

I think a lot about the difference between guilt and responsibility. Guilt is about me. Responsibility is about what I actually do. That’s part of why I’ve spent time learning what “reparations” and “land back” actually mean, instead of just repeating the words.

Reparations, under the United Nation’s Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to Remedy and Reparation, means five things together: 

  • Restitution — giving back what was taken: property, liberty, one’s place of residence.
  • Compensation — for what can be measured: lost earnings, lost property, lost opportunity.
  • Rehabilitation — real medical, psychological, legal, and social support.
  • Satisfaction — ending the harm that’s still happening, truth-seeking, apologies, memorials.
  • Guarantees of non-repetition — making sure it doesn’t happen again.

Land back, as the Yellowhead Institute’s Land Back report lays out, is about who gets to decide what happens on this land. Right now, roughly 89 percent of this country is still labelled “Crown Land,” open to industry without Indigenous consent. Land back is the work of moving that decision-making power back to the nations whose land this always was.

None of that happens through one donation. But every one of these organizations is doing a piece of that work right now, today, and a day’s pay is one concrete way to stand behind them rather than just alongside them in spirit.

My invitation to you

This year marks my tenth on this Native land. I have lived on Anishinaabe, Cree, Dakota, Dene, Métis, Kanien’kehá:ka, and Algonquin Anishinabeg territory. It is land that was never Canada’s to settle, administer, or offer, and land that taught me how to love more fully, more loudly, more like myself. I carry that gratitude, and I carry the responsibility that comes with it. Ten years in, I’m still learning what that responsibility looks like in practice and finding this campaign this year is one of those moments. 

Give a day’s pay. Give generously. Give abundantly. Donate to One Day’s Pay.

We recognize people may have relationships with other Indigenous groups and communities not identified this year by One Day’s Pay that you may wish to support. Whichever option you choose, we encourage you to give generously, without conditions, and with care and reflection.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/transitional-justice/reparations

https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/red-paper-report-final.pdf