A couple of significant events occurred in 100 Mile House and Williams Lake on Monday (Sept. 30).
It brought both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people together for the inaugural Orange Shirt Day, with a goal of sharing the feelings of hurt – both mental and physical abuse – and abandonment that the survivors dealt with after being ripped away from their families and taken to residential schools.
These children were removed from their families and stripped of their traditions, clothing, language and “heathenism” at the church-run schools in an attempt to assimilate them into the dominant “white” Christian culture.
The survivors of the residential-school system have felt the profound effects of this experience for the rest of their lives.
It’s difficult for people who have not experienced the horror to understand what these children, who have had families of their own and are now Elders, have gone through.
This is what these special events were about – shedding light on something we know very little about and, therefore, don’t understand.
The name for the inaugural Orange Shirt Day gatherings came from a story Dog Creek Elder Phyllis Webstad told about being a residential school survivor during the Remembering, Recovering and Reconciling – St. Joseph’s Missional Residential School Commemorative Project in Williams Lake last May.
She talked about the orange shirt her grandmother bought for her first day at school and how she was stripped of her clothing when she arrived at school and was given school clothing to wear instead. That pretty orange shirt was taken away permanently.
The memories of that lost shirt and the feelings of “worthlessness and insignificance” had been ingrained in her.
The theme of the Orange Shirt Day gatherings in Williams Lake and 100 Mile House was “Every Child Matters.”
That message was driven home at the gathering at 100 Mile House Elementary School when Canim Lake Band (Tsq’escen’) Elder Elizabeth Pete made a brief, but touching speech about her experience in residential school.
During her story, she asked everyone to close their eyes and listen carefully.
As the room quietened down, all that could be heard was the mournful sound of a child sobbing, sobbing, sobbing….
After a few moments, Elizabeth told the audience that is what she heard each and every night as she was curled up in her bed at residential school.
That shared emotional response was palpable in the large auditorium.
Indeed – every child matters.
