LAKELAND – Many years ago, when Phyllis Webstad was just a little girl, her grandmother bought her an orange shirt for her first day of school. But, when she got to the residential school, teachers took her orange shirt away.
The story is the origin of Orange Shirt Day, which is honoured on the same day as National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, both held annually on Sept. 30.
Residential schools had a strict dress code for students who were often forcefully removed from their families, “so it was a big humiliation right from the beginning,” according to Dennis Steinhauer, program director at the Mannawanis Native Friendship Centre (MNFC) in St. Paul.
“As soon as they got there, they had to have their hair cut. For us as Indigenous people, hair is a big representation of our life and our journey,” he explained, adding that everyone at the residential schools were also “literally” stripped of their clothing and everything they had.
Stories of a kerosene-based solution being poured on the hair of students to “kill any lice, even though nobody stopped to check if any of the kids had lice first,” have also been told, according to Steinhauer.
“They just had the impression of savage and dirtiness associated with all native people,” he said. Steinhauer added that the orange shirt is now a symbol of the resiliency of Indigenous people, and that despite all the atrocities that occurred, “we’re still here” and still very much a part of society.
The orange shirt is also a representation of the Indigenous peoples’ healing journey, and “we want as many people to be on board” with the healing journey, said Steinahuer. “Because, it’s not just Indigenous people that have traumas in their lives – so we want to walk that path together.”
He further explained, “The goal is to bring on as many people as we can as allies, and to ensure that people understand that this history happened, so it’s never repeated again. Even terminologies such as “cultural genocide” must be understood and recognized as part of truth and reconciliation.
“It was more than cultural genocide – it was genocide,” said Steinhauer, because “a lot of our kids that were put into these institutions never made it home.”
Hinano Rosa is the executive director at the Mannawanis Native Friendship Centre. He explained that Orange Shirt Day is one perspective of the residential school Legacy. He said there is also the continued colonization taking place among Indigenous people, and despite the region having many First Nation reserves and Métis settlements, there is a lack of information when it comes to Indigenous history.
“A large piece of what our centre does is to bring information to non-Indigenous people and even to Indigenous people that don’t know the history,” he said.
Students encouraged to take part
As the cultural advisor for St. Paul Education, Clifford Cardinal is working to create increased awareness about Indigenous culture and issues, while working within the education system.
“Our goal here at St. Paul Education Regional Division is to educate our youth so that they can hear facts and not hearsay,” said Cardinal. That education includes knowing the history of residential schools and how it affects the present situation in Canada.
More than 1,000 unmarked graves have been found so far at residential school sites in Canada, but Cardinal fears there will be more. He said one of the 94 calls to action is “exactly this, to start seeking out and finding evidence of children that have been buried,” in unmarked graves.
“We only have just begun.”
Cardinal adds, “When we finally get the truth of everything, all that has happened to our people in past... only then can we start to reconcile as a country." He acknowledges, “The truths are very hard right now,” but the revelation of truth and facts, and not hearsay, is crucial to moving forward.
According to Cardinal, each school under St. Paul Education has been encouraged to acknowledge Sept. 30 as a day of mourning, and a day of reconciliation, and to organize an activity that will impact students “in a way where residential schools will never happen in Canada (again),” said Cardinal.
Teachers within the school division will approach the topic in different ways for different age levels. For example, “Elementary students are creating a puzzle with pieces of encouragement, of hope, and sharing all the values that are really important in our way of life before contact.”
Cardinal further explained that even before the Age of Exploration, before “Jacques Cartier and Christopher Colombus,” there was a time of natural law and a belief system that people in North America held dear. In addition, elementary students are also going to be participating in an activity where they’re given a ribbon they can hang “on a fence or a tree” to acknowledge Orange Shirt Day.
In junior high school, students are encouraged to join activities like writing messages to Canada, encouraging the nation that “this will not happen again.”
Schools will also have activities related to Truth and Reconciliation on days leading up to Orange Shirt Day. Depending on a school’s schedule, Cardinal said some schools will hold the activities in various days early in the week, since there are no classes on Sept. 29 and 30.
“It’s important to share that all of our activities are student-organized,” he said, explaining the students are going to be the ones creating the program for the day. “They’re going to be actually emceeing and putting it together,” with guidance from Cardinal.
It is important for students to learn as much as they can about First Nations history, “because the history of Indigenous people has been suppressed” for far too long. “Even our very identity as Native peoples of Canada is not in our history books,” he said.
Often, when talking about the history of Canada, “we talk about all these politicians who have encouraged the suppression of my people for century and a half since the making of Canada,” said Cardinal.
But now, 150 years later, Cardinal is happy to see recent history textbooks indicating and showcasing the history of the First Nations people and their rich culture and tradition.
