Wearing orange in support

Tyler Lowey
Times Reporter

 

Students and faculty at Crowther Memorial Junior High School donned orange on Friday, Sept. 30, to support a great cause.
Sept. 30 has been declared Orange Shirt Day annually, in recognition of the harm the residential school system did to children’s sense of self-esteem and well being, and as an affirmation of a commitment to ensure everyone matters.
Orange Shirt Day was inspired by Phyllis Jack Webstad, a Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation elder in Williams Lake, B.C., and by her first day at residential school in 1973, when she was six.
“We never had very much money, and there was no welfare, but somehow my granny managed to buy me a new outfit to go to the Mission school,” Webstad recalls in a post on the Orange Shirt Day website (orangeshirtday.org). “I remember going to Robinson’s store and picking out a shiny orange shirt. It had string laced up in front, and was so bright and exciting – just like I felt to be going to school!”
But her first day at school was not what Webstad expected.
“When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never saw it again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine!”
And ever since then, the colour orange has held a special meaning to her.
“The colour orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing,” she wrote. “All of us little children were crying and no one cared.”
On Sept. 30, 2013, Webstad organized the first Orange Shirt Day in Williams Lake to acknowledge the harm that Canada’s residential school system has left in generations of indigenous families and their communities.
And every year on Sept. 30, Canadians are asked to wear orange as a sign of support.
Crowther Memorial Junior High School took the initiative and on Sept. 30, about 100 students and staff wore orange shirts in support of Webstad’s experience.
“We have a strong native population here and it’s important for everyone to understand the history and heritage behind it and not make the same mistakes,” said associate principal Ryan Hunter. “We also feel it’s important for our native students to show how it’s impacted their grandparents.”
This was CMJHS’s inaugural Orange Shirt Day and it’s a tradition the school plans to uphold.