Many Sitkans on Friday (9-29-23) will be joining an annual observance that began in Canada, but has significant meaning for Alaskans.
“Orange Shirt Day” began as a day of remembrance for Indigenous children who were separated from their families and sent to residential schools in Canada, but the event now encompasses first nations across the US.
Lillian Young, with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, explains that Orange Shirt Day commemorates surprisingly recent history.
“In 1973, when Phyllis Jack Webstad was six years old, she was sent to the Mission School near Williams Lake, British Columbia,” said Young. “Her first memory of her first day at the Mission School was that of having her own clothes taken away, including a brand new orange shirt given to her by her grandmother.”
Young says that Webstad attended a reunion of the St. Joseph Mission School in 2013 and shared this story, and “Orange Shirt Day” was born.
According to the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Cultural Survival, around 150,000 Indigenous children attended 130 boarding schools across Canada, the last of which closed only 27 years ago, in 1996.
From the 1800s to the 1960s, the US operated more boarding schools than Canada, but with fewer students overall. Cultural Survival reports that 35,000 children attended boarding schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and 15,000 attended BIA day schools.
Phyllis Jack Webstad’s story is now considered emblematic of the cultural erasure that took place in residential schools in both countries, along with other physical and emotional abuses – including the undocumented death and burial of students.
Lillian Young says that the only way to learn from this history is to face it.
“As hard as it may be for some people to learn about residential schools and our shared colonial history, It’s critical to acknowledge and recognize these topics in a spirit of ongoing learning and reconciliation,” she said.
Orange Shirt Day is officially September 30, but Sitka will observe it at noon on Friday, September 29, with a parade through downtown. Organizers have created a custom orange shirt for the event, which will be distributed to the first one-hundred people who assemble for the parade.
Chuck Miller, cultural liaison with the Sitka Tribe, says the shirt has significance for the community.
“The shirts that you’ll see people wearing on Saturday will say on the front X’atulitseen Haa Yatx’i at the top, and then Haa Ani at the bottom, which is The Land of Our People, The Land of the Lingít,” said Miller. “And then there’s going to be a very beautiful artwork that’s done by one of our local students, Emily Hoffay, through the Sitka Native Education Program, a high school student who has done the beautiful artwork for our logo.”
Translated, X’atulitseen Haa Yatx’i is “We cherish our children.” Afterwards, parade-goers will be treated to a gathering and presentation on the history of Orange Shirt Day at the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi (“tribal community house”), and a lunch that organizers say will include “a lot of orange foods, including candy.” Lineup for the parade begins at 11:30 a.m. at the Crescent Harbor Net Shed.
