Orange shirt day – because every child matters

 

by Susan Hofforth

 

Did you look forward to the first day of school every year when you were a child? Were you excited about the new lunch kits, new pencils and new clothes you would have? So was Phyllis Jack, when she started school in 1973. She was six-years-old, wearing a new outfit, with an orange shirt that she was very proud of. But, the exciting orange shirt with the string laced up in front, was taken away from her as soon as she got to the St. Joseph Mission Residential School.

 

“I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me. It was mine! The colour 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. All of us little children were crying and no one cared,” Phyllis says in her account.

 

For the past four years, schools and communities have been wearing orange shirts as a way to remember. The orange shirt has become a symbol of healing from the damage that was done to the heritage, the future, and the self-esteem of the children who were taken from their homes and communities and forced to attend the residential schools.

 

Phyllis is from the Shuswap First Nation in the Nicola Valley in BC. Today she is recognized for her impact on all communities from local, to international, because of the sharing of her orange shirt story. Orange Shirt Day, September 30, is a day to recognize the damage that the residential schools did to the self-esteem of the children who were forced to attend.

 

Some say that wearing an orange shirt on this day is a small gesture that will never be able to make amends for the kidnapping and abuse memories that are central to the survivor experience stories, but it is a step on the road to change. Schools teach more than reading, writing and arithmetic. When every child understands that they matter and so does every other child, and when every adult shows that they believe it, that is healing.

 

Students and staff at École St. Joseph and other schools in Living Waters School Division took part in Orange Shirt Day this year.  One thing that Orange Shirt Day gives is an opportunity once a year to keep the discussion on the residential schools happening. The date was chosen because it is the beginning of the school year, the time when the children were taken to the schools and because it sets the stage for anti-racism and anti-bullying policies for the rest of the year.