Every Child Matters! Orange Shirt Day (September 30th) is a day when we honour the Indigenous children who were sent away to residential schools in Canada and learn more about the history of those schools.
The “orange shirt” in Orange Shirt Day refers to the new shirt that Phyllis Webstad was given to her by her grandmother for her first day of school at St. Joseph’s Mission residential school in British Columbia. When Phyllis got to school, they took away her clothes, including her new shirt. It was never returned.
To Phyllis, the colour orange has always reminded her of her experiences at residential school and, as she has said, “how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.”
On Thursday, September 30, 2021, staff and students at OLR are encouraged to wear “Orange” to support and stand in solidarity with the FNMI communities in full recognition of the impact of Residential schools and the need to educate, learn from these serious past mistakes and focus our efforts on reconciliation. Students and staff will partake in some live stream virtual presentations in the afternoon, as well as, engaging in a variety of learning experiences on this day. We also look forward to learning about the stories of four survivors of the Residential School system from Kamloops, St. Mary’s Mission, and Williams Lake Residential School during our morning exercises at OLR to build on our understanding of these tragedies and to inform our planning of activities at the school level which address truth and reconciliation.
