ALT Orange Shirt Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation 2026

ALT On this Orange Shirt Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, as the years before, Room Magazine reaffirms our solidarity with the sovereignty of all Indigenous peoples worldwide and in so-called Canada, and our commitment to learning from and materially supporting Indigenous communities and survivors standing against the extractive and violent forces of empire-building projects. As we read, too, of the recent demonstration by white nationalists in Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc, we understand that simply observing the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is far from enough. Last year, we wrote: “it’s crucial to highlight the dialectic gap between a symbolic recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and brief acknowledgements of the deep injustice perpetrated against Indigenous peoples, and acting with awareness of the nation as an ongoing and violent colonial project against Indigenous peoples.”

ALT The same colonial logics that reduces solidarity with Indigenous peoples to a single day also lends itself to enabling violence against MMIWG2S, who have been killed by the police or had their murders underinvestigated by a system, and the individuals upholding it, that disregards the lives of women, girls, and Two-Spirit people. It governs where our attention is turned as the Senate votes down an amendment to the federal anti-hate legislation that would have classified public denial, downplaying, or justification of residential school harms as a criminal offense. How can we materially support Indigenous communities and survivors, and call for justice within the colony? What ideas and structures must we re-examine or betray to decolonize our worldviews and to continue standing in solidarity with visions of Indigenous leadership, knowledges, and futurisms?

ALT From “From Recognition to Decolonization: An Interview with Glen Coulthard,” by Glen Coulthard, Karl Gardner, and Devin Clancy, via Upping the Anti Glen Coulthard: ...For Indigenous peoples, reconciliation is often associated with a form of healing­­—healing ourselves from the violence of settler colonialism. We often think about it as a nation-to-nation reconciliation, so reconciling our hostile and violent relationship. But the settler state and its courts understand the term as reconciling the existence of Indigenous peoples’ title, jurisdictions, nationhood, and laws with the sovereignty of the crown. In other words, the state is trying to square a circle; trying to both affirm the principles of the Declaration within the colonial constitution of Canada. In doing so, a fundamental antagonism returns: whose rights are supreme? read on our website