The province is marking Orange Shirt Day on Monday in recognition of survivors of Canada’s residential schools
“Today, our government proclaims Orange Shirt Day in the Province of British Columbia. This is a day to acknowledge the survivors of residential schools and to stand with them and their families,” a statement from Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Scott Fraser reads.
“By participating in Orange Shirt Day each year, we act on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action to redress the colonial legacy of residential schools. More than that, to honour survivors we must all commit to a future grounded in meaningful reconciliation.”
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.
“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,” she said.
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.
After Webstad first told her story, Orange Shirt Day was launched in 2013 in Williams Lake to commemorate all of the residential school survivors.
Residential schools were church-run schools where approximately 150,000 Métis, Inuit and First Nations children were sent between the 1860s and the 1990s.
The federal government has since acknowledged that this approach was wrong, cruel and ineffective, and offered an official apology to the Indigenous people of Canada in 2008.
On Monday evening, the City of Victoria will host the first in a six-part series of conversations on reconciliation.
Called the Victoria Reconciliation Dialogues, it will begin with a discussion about Lekwungen Knowledge and the Land and will draw on the guidance of Lekwungen elders.
The discussion will be guided by Florence Dick of the Songhees Nation and Victoria City Councillor Marianne Alto.
It takes place at Victoria City Hall from 6 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., doors open at 5:30 p.m.
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