Orange Shirts & Reconciliation

Yesterday was Orange Shirt Day, a call for all Canadians to remember and honour Indigenous children who experienced the heartache and trauma of the residential school system across the country. This included physical and sexual and psychological abuse, a loss of culture, and even death. In recent years there has been an effort to discover how many children died in what was supposed to be care. A banner was unfurled with the names of 2800 children who died.This National Residential School Student Death Register was presented publicly for the first time on a scarlet banner at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. There are likely more than 4,000 children who died but the names of many are not known. The colour for the day is a commemoration of the experience of Phyllis Jack Webstad who as a child had her orange shirt confiscated. 

Joyce Hunter, right, whose brother Charlie Hunter died at St. Anne's Residential School in 1974, and Stephanie Scott, staff at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, lay down a ceremonial cloth with the names of 2,800 children who died in residential schools.

JUSTIN TANG/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Of course a number of Christian denominations, including the United Church of Canada, were partners with the federal government in this colonial school system which was a form of cultural genocide affecting the 150,000 children who were students, their families, and generations to come. The United Church has apologized for its involvement, established a healing fund, and paid reparations to many survivors. Still, it is the darkest aspect of United Church history. 



United Church of Canada Indigenous Ministries and Justice Staff

We should remember that the last school was closed in 1996, not really that long ago, and that there are still thousands of Indigenous children in care away from their families and communities across the country.

I've written about the experience with our children when we moved to Sudbury in the late 1980's. A few folk suggested that we might find another school than the one a short distance from our home. We realized it was because of the Ojibwa language program which meant Indigenous kids were brought to the school from across the city. Prejudices are stubborn. 

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