Orange Shirt Day

Today, September 30, is Orange Shirt Day, part of an Indigenous movement to remember and honor the survivors and victims of the residential schools or boarding schools across the US and Canada. These schools are not commonly talked about in the mainstream US, but their effects on Indigenous communities are still felt keenly by survivors and their descendants. Indian residential schools (as they were called in Canada) and Indian boarding schools (as they were called in the US) were first established during the mid-1800s by Christian churches and missionary groups with the purpose of “civilizing”, or forcibly assimilating, Indigenous children into Canadian and US American society. These children were taken from their homes (often without the consent of their families), had their hair cut and clothes taken, were given Anglicized names, and punished for speaking their native languages or practicing any part of their cultures. Neglect and abuse were rampant, and children left the schools traumatized and ashamed of their cultures. Many others died there. These schools were encouraged, supported, and sometimes funded by the national governments of both Canada and the US through the 1970s, and the last remaining residential school in Canada was only closed in 1996.

Orange Shirt Day is the creation of Phyllis Webstad, a Northern Secwpemc (Shuswap) woman from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation (Canoe Creek Indian Band). In 1973, at the age of 6 years old, she attended a residential school, where they stripped her and took away her new, shiny orange shirt that her grandmother had bought her specially for school. As she says now, “The color orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing” (source). Although Orange Shirt Day is more commonly recognized in Canada, which just last year officially established September 30th as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the US has a similar history, and Indigenous peoples across both countries recognize this day as a time of remembrance, healing, and action. Take some time to learn more through some of the links in this post, seek out and listen to the voices of Native people, and, if you can, support organizations that serve and advocate for survivors of residential and boarding schools (such as Indian Residential School Survivors Society, the Legacy of Hope Foundation, and the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition).