Honouring the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day
Image source: Orange Shirt Day Activities, Making Attachment Hearts
by Hadley Friedland
Orange shirts make me think of love.
As parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, we perform a thousand small and tender acts of love. Like Phyllis Webstad’s grandmother did for her when she took her to the store and let her pick out an orange shirt for her first day of residential school.
Just as the school staff stripped Phyllis and discarded her shirt, the residential school system stripped Indigenous children of the myriad of small and tender acts of love from their family members. And their family members’ ability to share their love with them.
All that love and support. Discarded. By design.
Survivors speak of coming out of residential schools not knowing love. And in turn, struggling or having to re-learn how to express love to their own children.
The expression of love leads me to think of Cree Elder Louis Bird’s story of how the Cree language spread throughout the west. It is a love story. The story is about a young girl named Morningstar, dearly wanted and beloved by her parents, who grows to be a kind hearted girl. When her parents die, her grandfather “did his best to love the young girl,” offering her warmth and comfort in her grief. When her grandfather grows ill, Morningstar stays with him and cares for him until his death, out of her great love for him. When he is dying, he blesses her:
May the Great Spirit bless you and protect you. May you find love and be loved as you
have loved me. The love you have for me shall be repaid to you many times over
because you respected me as your own parent. There will be love for you, my child, love
which you will enjoy on earth. But this man will be your husband, and you shall love him
much more than you have loved me. Soon he will show himself to you – you will decide.
That is my blessing.[1]
Morningstar chooses her husband, and their mutual love, as well as their love for their children, through their lifetimes, results in the Cree language spreading all the way to the Rocky Mountains and back.
Just as we must consider the lasting impacts of the discarded love in the residential schools, we should also remember that small, tender every day expressions of love can also have a long and lasting impact over time, space and generations.
In the final TRC National Event, held in Edmonton, Alberta from March 27-30th, 2014, the breadth and depth of the devastation and the courage of the survivors sharing their stories was profound.
The final event was a Closing Ceremony, and a Survivors Birthday Celebration. Many survivors had shared the pain of their birthdays passing with no celebration in the schools. Another tangible loss of seemingly small, yet achingly important, expressions of familial love. So the commissioners had invited church and community groups to bake cupcakes to honour the thousands of lost birthdays. The cupcakes were passed around and we all sang happy birthday with sticky fingers and tears in our eyes.
Today, many Indigenous Nations, communities and organizations are designing laws that express their love for their children and restore space for day-to-day love in the lives of their most vulnerable children and families. A particularly uplifting part of the work in relation to C92: An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families, is seeing so many communities legislating love. Some examples:
The names of some laws incorporate love: Saugeen First Nation’s law, “Zaag’idiwin” means “unconditional Love” and “to love, to care for” (Schedule “B”) as is Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation’s law: Namês Sâkahikan Sitoskatowin (love and support).
Other laws include love as a guiding principle. For example, Cowichan Tribes includes a number of guiding principles based on their Snuw’uy’ulh, including tl’i’ tul tst (love).
Some laws include love as a child’s right or a need. For example, Gwa'sala-'Nakwaxda’xw Nation legislation includes a list of rights of GNN children, including “Be loved” and the Tŝilhqot’in legislation sets out that every ʔEsqi (child) needs love.
Expressions of love, as a guiding principle, an acknowledged need, or a fundamental right, create potential to both continue and rebuild a lasting intergenerational legacy of love, just like
the story of Morningstar.
Wednesday, September 30 is the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day, a time to reflect on the legacy of residential schools, and to honour the survivors and their families.
For more information, see:
For immediate mental health support, the National Residential School Crisis Line is 1-866-925-4419.
The Hope for Wellness Helpline provides immediate, culturally safe, crisis intervention support for First Nations, Inuit and Métis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week through its hotline, 1-855-242-3310, or its online chat at hopeforwellness.ca
[1] Louis Bird, “Morning Star, a Love Story, and the Spread of the Cree Language” in Louis Bird, The Spirit Lives in the Mind, ed. Susan Elaine Gray, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007) at 132- 140.
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