OASW Honours the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day

September 30, 2022 marks Orange Shirt Day as well as Canada’s second annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This day is intended to honour the children who never returned home from Canada’s residential schools. It is also meant to honour, recognize, and empower the resiliency and strength of the Survivors, their families, and Communities.

This important day calls on all Canadians to reflect on the traumatic and ongoing impacts of the residential school system. However, we cannot stop there. We must commit to the ongoing process of reconciliation as individuals, a collective community, and a profession.

As social workers, this means understanding the history of our profession, the significant harms contributed against Indigenous People, and the important truth contained within our national association’s Statement of Apology and Commitment to Reconciliation. It means working to dismantle ongoing practices of privilege, colonization, systemic oppression, and anti-Indigenous racism and to participate in ongoing learning and critical reflection.

The Ontario Association of Social Workers has begun an internal journey on our path towards understanding truth and advancing reconciliation. As a part of this work, OASW’s team and Board have and will continue to engage in learning to support our personal and professional growth, reflection, understanding and action on reconciliation. We remain dedicated to developing learning opportunities and resources to assist our members to do the same.


Resources

  • OASW Land Acknowledgement Guide: We are pleased to share a guide to assist our members, volunteers, and the OASW Team in developing personalized land acknowledgments as one means to support continued action on reconciliation

About OASW
OASW is the voice of social work in Ontario. It is a voluntary, bilingual, non-profit association representing 8,500+ social workers. All members have a university degree in social work at the bachelor, master or doctoral level. OASW works to actively speak on behalf of social workers on issues of interest to the profession and advocates for the improvement of social policies and programs directly affecting social work practice and client groups served.