National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

September 30th has also been recognized for many years as Orange Shirt Day to acknowledge the atrocities and harm experienced by those who attended residential schools. We wear orange to honour the survivors and their families, to recognize their experiences, and to remember the children lost.   

The University of Ottawa Library has many titles, both in print and online, on topics of Residential Schools, Truth and Reconciliation, as well as stories and experiences of Indigenous peoples.  

On this day and throughout the year, we encourage you to take the time to listen, learn and reflect.  Below we have compiled a few resources to get started. For print books, you can borrow them from our display at the Morisset Library on the first floor from September 26th until October 3rd.  

Books

• This place : 150 years retold  

• Seven fallen feathers : racism, death, and hard truths in a northern city  

• Shuni  

• In search of April raintree   

• 21 things you may not know about the Indian Act : helping Canadians make reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a reality

• Unreconciled: family, truth, and indigenous resistance 

• Indian Horse: a novel  

• Sugar Falls : a residential school story 

• NDN coping mechanisms : notes from the field 

• Indigenous relations : insights, tips & suggestions to make reconciliation a reality 

• Five little Indians  

• Beyond the orange shirt story  

• Peuples autochtones au Québec - Diplomatie, militantisme et réconciliation [en français]

• Le droit au froid : le combat d’une femme pour protéger sa culture, l’Arctique et la planète  [en français]

• L'Indien malcommode : un portrait inattendu des Autochtones d'Amérique du Nord [en français]

• On nous appelait les Sauvages : souvenirs et espoirs d'un chef héréditaire algonquin [en français] 

• Mon pays métis : quelques vérités sur le Canada [en français]

• Dry lips devrait déménager à Kapuskasing [en français]

• Histoire et expériences des Métis et les pensionnats au Canada [en français]

• Namwayut : we are all one : a pathway to reconciliation 

• Kuei, my friend : a conversation on racism and reconciliation

• Unsettling Canada : a national wake-up call 

• In this together : fifteen stories of truth & reconciliation  

• The mush hole : life at two Indian residential schools 

• Dancing on our turtle's back : stories of Nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence and a new emergence

• The education of Augie Merasty : a residential school memoir 

E-books

• Pathways of reconciliation : Indigenous and settler approaches to implementing the TRC's calls to action

• Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School  

• Résponse, responsabilité et renouveau cheminement du Canada vers la vérité et la réconciliation [en français]

• Canada, Aboriginal peoples, and Residential Schools

• A Knock on the door : the essential history of residential schools

• Renouer avec la Terre et tout ce qui nous unit [en français]

• L'œil du maître figures de l'imaginaire colonial québécois [en français]

• Décoloniser le Canada : cinquante ans de militantisme autochtone [en français]

• Peuples autochtones et politique au Québec et au Canada : identités, citoyennetés et autodétermination [en français]

• Mythes et réalités sur les peuples autochtones [en français]

• Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and   Reconciliation in Canada

• Kaandossiwin : how we come to know : Indigenous re-search methodologies 

• The Right to Be Cold; One Woman's Fight to Protect the Arctic and Save the Planet from Climate Change

• As We Have Always Done : Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance 

• Indigenous writes : a guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit issues in Canada 

• Highway of Tears : a true story of racism, indifference and the pursuit of justice for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls

• Claiming Anishinaabe : decolonizing the human spirit  

Films (Online)

• We Were Children 

• Les enfants perdus [en français]

• In the Beginning was Water and Sky 

• Holy Angels 

• Indian Horse | Cheval Indien

• Nos histoires - Ça devait être fait [English audio with French subtitles] / Second stories – it had to be done. 

• Stories are in our Bones | Des histoires ancrées en nous  

• Kanehsatake: 270 years of resistance (in English and French) 

Truth and Reconciliation - Other resources

• Legacy of Hope Foundation 

• Canada's Residential Schools: Reconciliation. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Volume 6

• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action 

• Reclaiming Power and Place: the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls