Survivors, families, students, and staff attend UBC’s annual Intergenerational March to commemorate Orange Shirt Day, September 30, 2025. Photo courtesy the Province of British Columbia/Flickr.

To mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30—and following a gathering of masked white nationalists on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc land near Kamloops, where members of Second Sons Canada displayed a banner invoking residential school denialism—Canadian Dimension is publishing the conclusion to the new book Truth Before Reconciliation: Confronting Residential School Denialism as a timely guide to defending the historical record and confronting the denialist backlash.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada released its final report 10 years ago, in 2015, and it changed Canada forever. On the one hand, we have witnessed a lot of progress in the last decade. In 2019, the Government of Canada passed the Indigenous Languages Act to protect, revitalize, and promote Indigenous languages, directly addressing Calls to Action 13, 14, and 15. In 2021, responding to Call to Action 80, September 30 (originally, Orange Shirt Day) was established as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund was created to help communities search for unmarked burials and missing children. Also in 2021, responding........

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