Content warning: This article contains details about residential “schools.” Please read with care for your spirit. The residential “school” survivor whose story sparked Orange Shirt Day — and the “Every Child Matters” movement — says she is worried the cause is being forgotten.
Phyllis Webstad, founder and CEO of the Orange Shirt Society, told IndigiNews she’s noticed a growing number of public posters and government campaigns are instead focused on the recently adopted National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (NDTR). In 2013, Orange Shirt Day was born after she shared her childhood story of her new orange shirt — gifted to her by her grandma — being taken from her at age six, on her first day at the St. Joseph’s Mission in the early 1970s.
Orange shirts — often bearing the motto “Every Child Matters” — have become a symbol honouring children who never returned home from residential “schools,” as well as survivors of the colonial institutions. For 11 years, Sept. 30 has been marked across the country as Orange Shirt Day.
Webstad’s story has contributed to the discourse around the history of colonialism in “Canada” — particularly residential “schools,” where she recalls being “sick, hungry, tired, lonely, bawling my eyeballs out” at age six. “Four-, five- and six-year-olds should not be comforting each other, and that was the case,” Webstad, of Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation (Canoe Creek Indian Band), told IndigiNe.