September 30th
Every Child Matters
On this day, we take the time to honor and remember all of Canada's Indigenous children who were taken out of their communities to be sent away to residential schools. It is a time to reflect on the history of residential schools, and to better educate ourselves on what happened in them.
The name "Orange Shirt Day" came from one child's first experience in a residential school. The grandmother of Phyllis Webstad had gifted her an orange shirt for her first day at St. Joseph's Mission residential school. Upon Phyllis' arrival to the school, they stripped her of her clothing, including her orange shirt, which was never returned.
Orange Shirt day is about recognizing the harm and injustices endured by Indigenous children due to the residential school system.
It is a reminder that every child matters.
Active for over 160 years, government-run, church-operated residential schools were instituted in order to indoctrinate Indigenous peoples into colonial European political, social, and cultural values. Between the 1830s and 1996, when the last residential school closed in Canada, more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children were forcibly removed from their families and communities to live in boarding schools, where they were stripped of their culture, traditions, and native language through systematic abuse under the pretense of education. The legacy of the residential school system continues to have far-reaching effects on survivors, their descendants, and communities today.
In 2015, the TRC published its summary findings and 94 Calls to Action to redress the legacy of residential schools. Among these are calls on federal and provincial governments to educate the public and address systemic prejudice against Indigenous people in areas such as criminal justice, child welfare, and healthcare.
Reconciliation has only just begun. Just as the system itself did not develop overnight, the process of healing will take time and effort. It is on all of us, individually and as a country, to acknowledge our shared history and its role on the present in order to improve the future.
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