While Orange Shirt Day is usually commemorated across Canada on September 30, due to Jewish holidays, we opted to postpone our own commemoration to October 26.
Orange Shirt Day is a legacy of the St. Joseph Mission (SJM) residential school commemoration event held in Williams Lake, BC, Canada, in the spring of 2013. It grew out of Phyllis Webstad’s story of having her shiny new orange shirt taken away on her first day of school at the Mission, and it has become an opportunity to keep the discussion on all aspects of residential schools happening annually. It is also a chance for us to set the stage for anti-racism and anti-bullying programs for the school year.
The Social Justice 12 class spent a number of classes researching different aspects of Canada’s history of residential schools, as well as the impacts of racism and colonialism, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and the Highway of Tears, and the stereotypes that persist about indigenous people. Facts from their research are posted all over King David on bright orange sheets of paper. Grade 12 student Yael Toyber also created a provocative series of art pictures meant to draw attention to how negative stereotypes can erase the humanity and individuality of indigenous people.
Social Justice students also helped to plan and craft an educational assembly, including the videos linked below, which the whole school attended on Friday. Rebecca Laskin and Yael Toyber led the presentation, with support from the rest of the Social Justice class.
To learn more about Phyllis Webstad’s story, please click here.
To learn more about Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, please
click here.
To hear from Senator Murray Sinclair about the importance of honouring residential school survivors, please
click here.
