Orange Shirt Day and the Residential School System

October 19, 2018

Orange Shirt Day and the Residential School System

Five years ago, First Nations, local governments, schools and communities began to set aside a special day – September 30 – to honor victims of the residential school system and the harm inflicted on generations of Indigenous people, their families and communities. It is called Orange Shirt Day. Visiting Victoria we learn that a 4-hour Orange Shirt Day event took place here on the 30th, as well as in many other communities, schools and churches throughout Canada.

A feature of the day is that people wear specially designed orange shirts to work, school or just around town. Why orange shirts? This grew from one survivor’s account, given in 2013 as part of a special government commission studying the residential schools, of having her new orange shirt taken away on her first day many years earlier at St. Joseph Mission residential school near Williams Lake, BC.

Calling these government-sponsored but largely church-run schools “cultural genocide,” the commission’s report in 2015 documented the widespread physical, cultural and sexual abuse experienced by 150,000 native children between 1883 to 1998. As many as 4 percent of the children died at the schools, and countless others were lost subsequently to alcoholism, suicide or became abusive themselves.

During our travels, we have been listening to a searing and disturbing account of the abuse inflicted on young children by the residential school system. It is “They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School,” by Bev Sellars. The title is based on nuns’ use of numbers for each child, rather than their names. Sellars’ number was ‘1’. Sellars also relates, “Ninety or more years after she left St. Joseph’s Mission, my grandmother still remembered her number — 27 — and 28 — the number assigned to her sister, Annie. My mom remembers her number was 71. Thankfully, our numbers were not tattooed on our skin.”

Through a lifelong effort at healing, Sellars managed to overcome the beatings, hunger, lack of compassion, threat of sexual abuse, sadness, and her own alcoholism and attempts at suicide. She even went on to earn a law degree. Too many others, including 8 of her grandmother’s 9 children were not so fortunate, succumbing early to the effects of the residential schools on themselves and a whole generation. The damage is still being felt and continues to decimate communities, families and individuals.

For more information on the schools there is a compilation of useful websites at:

https://learning.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/pathways/residential-schools-reconciliation/read/