tansi ninôtemik,
Phyllis Webstad, a residential school survivor and member of the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation, is the founder of the Orange Shirt Society. [1] When Phyllis was six years-old, her grandmother bought her a new outfit for the new school. [2] Phyllis picked out a new orange shirt. [3] Once she arrived at the residential school, however, she was stripped and all of her clothes were taken away, including her new orange shirt. [4]
Phyllis explained that she felt worthless after this incident. [5] Acknowledging that experiences instilling worthlessness at the residential school impacted her life, she stresses the importance of encouraging others to share their stories through Orange Shirt Day. [6] At the residential school, when her clothes were taken away, she explained: “All of us little children were crying and no one cared.” [7]
No one can erase the pain and trauma that Indigenous children experienced in residential schools. Many Indigenous children did not survive. We can wear an orange shirt to show that we care.
If anyone is looking for ways to explain Orange Shirt Day to their children, Phyllis published The Orange Shirt Story and Phyllis’s Orange Shirt, which are children’s books addressing Canada’s history of residential schools. [8]
John Borrows, a prominent legal scholar, writes on residential schools, explaining that survivors experienced sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, often at the hands of their caregivers. [9] He writes that some Indigenous people choose not to acknowledge the harm, even if they were neglected or starved. [10] Some Indigenous people also say that they benefited from residential schools. [11] We must acknowledge survivors’ spectrum of experiences. Not acknowledging survivors’ stories would deny them agency when residential schools have already stolen their agency in the past. [12]
Acknowledging survivors’ experiences, which are overwhelmingly traumatic, however, is different from residential school denialism. Residential school deniers will either deny the harms that the residential school system caused, or minimize that harm by picking one person’s experience to manipulate the broader narrative of collective survivors’ experiences. [13] Overall, denialists simply do not believe the horrors that residential schools inflicted; this disbelief can be understood as an ongoing form of colonialism, where the colonizers’ narrative denies Indigenous experience and the harm of colonization.
Orange Shirt Day is an opportunity for non-Indigenous and Indigenous people to acknowledge the past and support a future of truth over denialism. Understanding unjust histories and systemic abuse is a part of reconciliation.
ekosi.
The ReconciliACTION Team
Citations
[1] Orange Shirt Society, “An introduction to Phyllis (Jack) Webstad and her story: her journey to residential school survivor and community leader”, online: https://orangeshirtday.org/phyllis-story/#story.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] John Borrows, “Residential Schools, Respect, and Responsibilities for Past Harms,” (2014) 64:4 University of Toronto LJ at 486-487.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Wolf Depner, “Growing residential school denial ‘the last step in genocide’: report”, The Abbotsford News, (20 June 2023), online: https://www.abbynews.com/news/growing-residential-school-denial-the-last-step-in-genocide-report-1837919.
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