By: Isabella Ángel H. Pedro Navarro E./25/02/2021

WHAT IS THE “ORANGE SHIRT DAY”? AND WHY DO PEOPLE COMMEMORATE IT?

This is an event that not many people know about. But, in a few words, this is a really important Canadian day because it talks about something that happened many, many years ago, it was, that when the indigenous children were taken away from their homes to be part of the christian schools from the government.

What is the "orange shirt day”?

It is a day in which people commemorates that many years ago, the Canadian government with help of the christian church tried to erase the indigenous culture, because they thought that the indigenous people needed to be “purified” in order to be part of the Canadian society.

What happened exactly to the children?

The Canadian government started to think it was better for the indigenous children to take them away from their families, costumes, and culture, to save their “souls”. It was as a consequence from the union of the government with the christian church. It developed on millions of children converted into this religion, suffering hard changes, physically and mentally. The period of time where the indigenous children were taken was between 1860-1990. Canada has a record of more or less 150 000 children that went to the residential schools. This day is in honor to those children, who lost their lifestyle and also to educate people about what happened. It is celebrated the 30th of September and it was started to be recognized on 2013.

Photo URL: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/06/canada-dark-of-history-residential-schools 

Why it is called “orange shirt day”?

Of this day they are a lot of stories that had been told and some that we will never know about, but the story of Phyllis Webstad stand out of the others. She was just a girl when she started going to a residential school. On her first day, her grandma gave her an orange shirt for her to remember her family and have the feeling that she was not alone, but the school took everything that she owned away from her, including the shirt. So, years later when she told her story, she said that she always remembers those experiences as the color orange, because that event really impacted her. That’s the reason it became an icon, and so did the color, that’s why today the name to commemorates it is “Orange shirt day”.

Photo URL: https://www.ocsb.ca/2020/09/29/orange-shirt-day-september-30/ 

Why do people commemorate it?

It is commemorated for 2 aspects.

In first place, in honor to all the people affected (indigenous families, and christian families, because they received children, which were accustomed to a different lifestyle, and this could generate shocks in this kind of relationships).

The other aspect is that every Canadian should know about his or her country’s history.

Our opinion about this movement

Related to this topic, we think it was a regrettable event that marked not only the affected children but also their families and the christian families that received them. Never less it is a tragic event, we think is fair to recognize it and to be celebrated annually for those families and for the people that needs to know what happened.