Native People and non-native people of Canada will be honouring the Indigenous residential school survivors and remember those who did not survive by wearing orange shirts. Orange Shirt Day was started in 2013. It was created to educate people and promote awareness about the Indian residential school system and the impact this system had on Indigenous communities for more than a century in Canada, and still does today.
The Orange shirt has become the symbol of overcoming adversity. Why orange? Because of Phyllis Jack Webstad from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation, who went to St. Joseph Mission Residential School. On her first day of school, Phyllis wore a new orange shirt that her grandmother had given her. It was immediately taken away, and that was the start of Phyllis’s alienation from her family and community, a genocide caused by actions of the church and the federal government.
Many Indigenous children, about thirty percent of indigenous children were sent to Residential Schools. Students were taught English and punished for speaking their Native language. However, Canada‘s residential (boarding) schools inadequately preparing students to live in white society or to return to their reserves. Europeans main goal was to “Kill the Indian in the Child”.
Orange Shirt Day is a time for us all to remember those events and to make aware to mainstream society what happened to Indigenous children because it is not in the history books, and the intergenerational effects on today’s indigenous population. This day shows the continuing strength and resilience of Indigenous peoples.
Lenora Maracle
UNE National Equity Representative for Aboriginal Peoples