Orange Shirt Day

Impactful assemblies around SD83 schools were held to recognize Orange Shirt Day on September 30.

Residential school survivors and community speakers including Ethel Thomas, Frankie Joseph and Marion Lee at Pleasant Valley Secondary School, Rose Miller from the Simpcw First Nation at Shuswap Middle School, and Gloria Morgan at Jackson Secondary shared their experiences and messages of hope for the future.

Orange Shirt Day is an event that started in 2013. It was designed to educate people and promote awareness about the Indian residential school system and the impact that this system had on Indigenous communities.

The colour orange refers to the new shirt worn by six-year-old Phyllis Webstad on her first day at a residential school in Williams Lake, B.C., in 1976.  Her orange shirt was taken away from her and she had to wear a uniform.

Her story sparked a national movement to recognize the experience of survivors of Indian residential schools, honour them, and demonstrate a commitment to ensure that every child matters. This initiative calls for every Canadian to wear an orange shirt on September 30 in the spirit of healing and reconciliation. The date was chosen for the annual event because it is the time of year in which Indigenous children were historically taken from their homes to residential schools.

During the residential school era it is estimated that:

• 150,000 children attended these schools.
• Over 6,000 died while attending these schools (based on partial federal government records).
• Approximately 80,000 survivors of these schools are alive today

Check out more SD83 Orange Shirt Day activities by clicking here