U of T observes National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day with tri-campus event

Rochelle Allan never met her grandmother, and doesn’t know the details of her experience in Canada’s residential school system.  

But as an Anishinaabe woman working to preserve her language, she often reflects on the path her grandmother was forced to walk. 

“I think about her a lot – and especially, specifically [when] teaching children and teaching infants,” said Allan, an Indigenous language revitalization partnership co-ordinator at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Indigenous Studies.

The importance of that work is reflected in Allan’s own household, where she is raising her two children to speak Anishinaabemowin as their first language. She says she wants to ensure “that it’s not just the grandparent generation that speaks, but that we can look forward to future generations of first language-speaking children who understand the language in its true form.”

Allan shared her experience during a panel discussion on Indigenous language advocacy, part of the university’s commemoration of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day. Flags on all three campuses – including Survivors’ Flags and Every Child Matters flags raised earlier in the month – were lowered to half-mast.

The tri-campus event, held in Hart House’s Great Hall, drew hundreds and was made available to the wider community via YouTube livestream. There was also a ceremonial fire immediately following at Ziibiing, the Indigenous teaching and gathering space on Hart House Green.  

The Hart House ceremony included remarks by Alexandra Gillespie, vice-president of U of T and principal, U of T Mississauga,  David Kim, warden of Hart House, and Wes Hall, the university’s chancellor.

Gillespie noted the coming year will see the formal unveiling of an Anishinaabemowin name for U of T Mississauga's new student residence. For those who are unfamiliar with the language, learning what such names mean is an example of the ongoing work of truth and reconciliation, she said. “That work belongs to all of us in Canada, not only to the Indigenous friends and colleagues who have been carrying the heaviest part of it,” Gillespie said. “Today we remember and today we think about the work that is ahead.”

Attendees also heard from Hadya Noori, a first-year student in psychology and health studies at U of T Scarborough, who delivered a land acknowledgement at the event’s outset. 

Many in attendance wore orange shirts featuring noojimo’iwe, an award-winning design by MJ Singleton, an Ojibwe, Two-Spirit alum of U of T Mississauga.  

The panel discussion, titled “Loss, Resistance and Reclamation: Reflections on Indigenous language advocacy in community and post-secondary education,” also featured contributions from Charlotte Logan, who is Akwesasne Mohawk and a 2025 provost postdoctoral fellow in U of T’s department of linguistics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, and Megan Lukaniec, member of the Wendat Nation and associate professor at Université Laval.

Lukaniec said that while the Wendat language has been dormant for nearly 150 years, she is encouraged by a resurgence of interest among the next generation of members of her community, noting “a critical mass of young folks” who want to revitalize it. 

“Today, we're working to revalue who we are as a people and what that means, and part of that, is language – because language is part of our identity.”