From Commemoration to Commitment in the Nonprofit Sector

Every year on September 30, Canada marks Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

We wear orange. We attend events. We listen to Survivors. We learn about the residential school system and the children who were taken from their families.

These acts of remembrance matter.

But if we are committed to anti-oppression and reconciliation, we also have to ask a harder question:

What are we doing differently?

For nonprofit organizations, September 30 should not be the only day of the year when we think about Indigenous Peoples, colonialism, or reconciliation. It can be a moment to pause, learn, and recommit, but the work needs to continue long after the orange shirts come off.

Orange Shirt Day is about people, not just history

Orange Shirt Day began as a grassroots movement led by Residential School Survivor Phyllis Webstad. September 30 honours Survivors and their families and remembers the children who never returned home. The orange shirt has become a symbol of the loss of culture, freedom, and self-esteem experienced by Indigenous children through the residential school system.

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation was established in response to Call to Action #80 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Both are observed on September 30, but they are not a replacement for one another: Orange Shirt Day remains an Indigenous-led movement rooted in Survivor experience and community action.

For non-Indigenous organizations, this distinction is important.

We are not the centre of this day.

Our role is to listen, learn, support Indigenous-led work, and consider what responsibility looks like within our own organizations.

Reconciliation is also workplace work

The nonprofit sector often sees itself as progressive.

We work on poverty, housing, gender justice, disability justice, migrant rights, environmental justice, food security, violence prevention, and many other issues. We often understand ourselves as organizations working toward a more just society.

And yet, being part of the nonprofit sector does not automatically make an organization anti-oppressive.

Organizations can reproduce colonial relationships even while doing work that is intended to challenge other forms of oppression.

This is one reason reconciliation needs to be part of organizational practice, not simply a statement on a website.

It can show up in who gets hired. Who gets funded. Who gets invited into a partnership. Whose knowledge is treated as expertise. Who makes decisions. Whose timelines are prioritized. Who gets asked to educate everyone else. And who has the power to say no.

Start by asking what your organization is doing (not what it is saying)

A land acknowledgement can be a meaningful practice when it is connected to an organization’s relationships and responsibilities. But it should not be the end of the conversation.

Instead of asking only:

“Do we have a land acknowledgement?”

we can ask:

“What does acknowledging this territory require of us?”

For organizations in Quebec, this also means learning about the Indigenous Nations whose territories we work on and with, rather than treating Indigenous Peoples as one homogenous group.

A land acknowledgement can open a door. What we do after walking through it is what matters.

What can nonprofit employers do?

Reconciliation can feel overwhelming, particularly when organizations are unsure where to start. It doesn’t have to begin with a large new initiative.

It can begin with examining the organization you already have.

1. Make reconciliation part of organizational planning

Don’t leave reconciliation to the one person who is passionate about it.

Include it in strategic plans, annual objectives, Board discussions, staff learning plans, and organizational policies.

Ask:

• What are our commitments?
• Who is responsible for following through?
• What resources have we allocated?
• How will we know whether we are making progress?
• How are Indigenous people and organizations involved in defining what meaningful action looks like?

If reconciliation is everyone’s responsibility, it needs to be reflected in the organization’s structures and not just individual goodwill.

2. Compensate Indigenous people for their knowledge and labour

Inviting an Indigenous Elder, Knowledge Keeper, facilitator, artist, consultant, speaker, or community organization to contribute to your work is labour.

Pay for it. Properly.

This includes meetings, workshops, consultations, speaking engagements, advisory work, and creative contributions. 

How much do you spend on your CRM? Why should Indigenous knowledge cost less?

3. Build relationships before you need something

One of the easiest ways for nonprofit organizations to reproduce extractive relationships is to contact Indigenous organizations only when we need:

• A partner for a grant application
• An Indigenous perspective for a report
• A speaker for an event
• A consultation to meet a project requirement

Relationship-building should not begin when we need something.

Take time to learn about Indigenous organizations in your community. Attend public events when invited. Support Indigenous-led initiatives. Make space in your budget for partnerships that are not tied to an immediate organizational deliverable.

4. Review your hiring practices

Ask who is represented in your organization and who isn’t.

Look at:

• Recruitment networks
• Job descriptions
• Hiring criteria
• Interview practices
• Employment policies
• Opportunities for advancement
• Workplace accommodations
• Leadership and Board composition

Do not assume that a lack of Indigenous applicants means Indigenous people “aren’t interested” and instead consider what your organization may be communicating about who belongs there. But don’t forget to do the work to make your organization safe for all people. 

5. Create space for cultural and community responsibilities

Indigenous employees may have responsibilities to family, community, ceremony, land, language, and Nation that don’t fit neatly into conventional workplace structures.

Review your leave and accommodation policies.

Can employees participate in important cultural or community obligations without having to choose between their workplace and their responsibilities?

Flexibility can be an important part of creating workplaces where Indigenous people can participate without having to leave parts of themselves at the door. 

This is something that benefits non-Indigenous members of your team as well. For example, at COCo, instead of a strict Holiday, we have “floating holidays”. This allows for our staff to take their federal holidays on dates that are important to them, and not strictly recognized by the State. Similarly, we have “community-support hours” where our staff is able to take time off work to attend a rally or attend a ceremony. Allowing our staff to continue to show up for our communities and relations is part of being an anti-oppressive workplace. 

6. Don’t make Indigenous employees responsible for reconciliation

If you have Indigenous staff members, they should not automatically become your organization’s “Indigenous expert.”

Being Indigenous is not a job description. And no individual can represent every First Nation, Inuit, or Métis experience.

7. Support Indigenous-led organizations with more than words

Nonprofit organizations can use their resources and institutional power to support Indigenous-led work.

Consider:

• Purchasing services from Indigenous-led organizations and businesses
• Funding Indigenous-led initiatives
• Sharing Indigenous-led resources
• Making introductions and connections
• Offering space or infrastructure when appropriate
• Advocating alongside Indigenous organizations
• Supporting campaigns and calls to action identified by Indigenous communities

Sometimes solidarity means stepping forward. Sometimes it means making room.

And sometimes it means using your organization’s resources without needing to be at the centre.

What can non-Indigenous employees do?

Not everyone has organizational decision-making power. But everyone can practice solidarity.

Learn without asking Indigenous colleagues to teach you

There are many Indigenous-led resources, books, organizations, events, and educational opportunities available. Do your own learning.

And when you make a mistake, resist the urge to immediately ask an Indigenous colleague to explain what you did wrong. Learning includes developing the capacity to sit with discomfort.

Speak up when Indigenous people are being harmed

If you hear stereotypes, racist jokes, inappropriate comments, or dismissive language at work, don’t wait for an Indigenous colleague to respond. Challenge it. Don’t make the person experiencing harm responsible for educating everyone else or defending their humanity.

Pay attention to whose knowledge is valued

Ask yourself:

Whose expertise do we invite?

Whose knowledge is considered “professional”? Whose knowledge is treated as anecdotal?

Nonprofit organizations often value lived experience, but we should also examine whether we actually recognize Indigenous knowledge systems and community expertise as legitimate forms of knowledge.

Support Indigenous-led work

Follow Indigenous-led organizations. Buy from Indigenous artists and businesses. Donate to Indigenous-led organizations. Share their work.

And, importantly, don’t centre yourself when doing it.

Solidarity doesn’t require an announcement every time we do something supportive.

What can organizations do on September 30?

If your organization is planning an Orange Shirt Day activity, consider going beyond “wear orange and post on social media.”

You could:

Learn together.
Set aside paid work time for staff to engage with Indigenous-led educational resources.

Support Indigenous-led events.
Instead of creating your own event, participate in or promote an existing Indigenous-led gathering.

Make a financial commitment.
Consider donating to an Indigenous-led organization or creating an ongoing organizational commitment rather than a one-time September donation.

Review one policy.
Use September 30 as a starting point to examine a workplace policy through a reconciliation lens.

Make a commitment.
Choose one concrete organizational change and assign responsibility for following through.

We also need to be accountable about what we don’t know

COCo’s own experience with Diversité d’Abord offers an important lesson.

Our research originally intended to examine both racism and colonialism in the Quebec nonprofit sector. But only 2.44% of survey respondents identified as Indigenous, and none of our focus group participants did. We determined that this was not enough information to responsibly analyze the experiences of Indigenous community-sector workers.

We also came to better understand the importance of Indigenous data sovereignty: the principle that Indigenous Peoples should be primary decision-makers about how data created with or about them is governed and controlled. As a result, we decided that COCo was not the right organization to conduct that part of the research.

For us, this was an important lesson in anti-oppressive practice:

Sometimes accountability means recognizing that we are not the right people to lead something.

Reconciliation requires humility.

We don’t need to have all the answers before we begin. But we do need to be willing to ask better questions, listen to Indigenous leadership, and change course when necessary.

For COCo, reconciliation is part of our broader commitment to anti-oppression: building community organizations that are healthier, more accountable, and better equipped to contribute to a socially just world.