While many businesses encourage staff to don orange shirts -- a tradition started by residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad in 2013 -- or to sell wares in the bright hue on Sept. 30, those efforts quickly fade. Companies often don't do much more to elevate Indigenous voices and causes, Indigenous leaders say.
FILE - Krystal Abotossaway, TD Bank Group's senior manager of diversity and inclusion, poses for a photograph in Toronto's financial district on Monday, February 8, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Tijana MartinChelsee Pettit spent much of the summer collaborating with designers to create and manufacture apparel reflective of the Indigenous values she hoped would be on people's minds when Canada marks its second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
Pettit has tried her best to accommodate last-minute orders, but she and other members of the Indigenous business community see the trend as a sign of how much more work corporate Canada has to do to turn support for Indigenous communities into a 365-day-a-year effort. Those efforts should begin with educating staff about both long-standing and new traumas Indigenous Peoplesface and how to support those affected.
Krystal Abotossaway, president of the Indigenous Professional Association of Canada, said she has seen more companies move toward reflecting on what they can do to improve their corporate culture and support Indigenous communities in recent years. "Some corporations are just not even knowing what the right question is to ask," she said. "I think we need to move beyond that, if we're going to really progress as a country."