Today, Physical Literacy NWT recognizes the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day.
Physical Literacy is often described through motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding. But underneath all of those things is something even more fundamental: Belonging. People are more likely to move, participate, explore, play, and remain active when they feel safe, welcomed, respected, and connected to the people and places around them. Today asks us to think deeply about what belonging means.
Orange Shirt Day grew from the experience of residential school Survivor Phyllis Webstad, whose orange shirt was taken from her when she arrived at residential school as a child. Her story helped inspire the message: Every Child Matters.
We remember the children who never returned home from residential schools, Survivors, their families, and the generations who continue to experience the impacts of the residential school system. For those of us working in physical literacy, recreation, education, health, justice, community development, and sport, reconciliation asks us to look beyond programs and activities. Movement does not exist separately from culture, community, history, land, or relationships.
Across the Northwest Territories, people have moved on and with the land for generations. Movement can mean sport, but it can also mean walking, paddling, hunting, fishing, dancing, playing, cycling, travelling on the land, gathering with others, and countless other ways people connect with their bodies, cultures, communities, and environments.
If our goal is truly to help people develop a lifelong relationship with movement, we must listen to how communities understand movement themselves. We must ask whose knowledge is represented. Whose experiences shape our programs? Who feels welcome? Who makes decisions? What barriers have we created, even unintentionally? And what can we learn when we stop assuming that one approach works for everyone?
Reconciliation requires listening before leading. It requires relationships before programs. And it requires recognizing that sometimes the most important thing we can do is create space for someone else to teach us. Today, we remember. Today, we listen.
Today, we learn. And tomorrow, we carry that learning into the communities, programs, policies, and relationships we help create. Because physical literacy is not simply about helping people move. It is about helping people discover that movement can belong to them throughout their lives. And everyone deserves that opportunity. 🧡 Every Child Matters.