Winnipeg students don orange shirts to honour residential school survivors

This is the weekend to wear orange and acknowledge the plight of residential school survivors and their families.

Orange Shirt Day, officially observed every year on Sept. 30, encourages Canadians to remember what happened to First Nations students at residential schools across the country.

Because the annual event falls on a weekend this year, students at several schools across Manitoba marked the day early, wearing orange shirts and holding events on Friday.

Students at Winnipeg's Biindigen-New Directions high school marched from their school to the Winnipeg Adult Education Centre, where drums were banged, songs were sung, and people and their stories were remembered.

"I think it's very important for people to be aware that our First Nations culture has been undermined and put aside," said Candace Hawkins, a youth classroom teacher who helped organize the school's second annual Orange Shirt Day event.

"It's time that we are walking and honouring our traditional culture, and the fact that the residential schools system has [for a] long time berated our First Nations culture."

Orange Shirt Day began in 2013 and was inspired by the story of Phyllis Jack Webstad, an elder from the Stswecem'c Xgat-tem First Nation in B.C.

In 1973, Webstad was stripped of her new orange shirt on her first day at a residential school, never to see it again. She has said the colour now reminds her of how her feelings didn't matter at the school.

Janet Frolek, a high-school guidance counsellor at St. James Collegiate, said today's students have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that things like this could happen.

"They feel touched, they feel upset. Some students feel very angry," she said.

Students surprised

St. James student Sarah Le, who was part of an Orange Shirt Day performance for George Waters Middle School students on Friday, said she was surprised to learn of Canada's sordid past with residential schools.

"Canada is thought of as a country that is inclusive, especially about diversity," said Le. "So it's definitely a shock to learn about the past."

Classmate Avery Beaton-Stokell said wearing orange is the least she could do to honour residential school students and their families.

"It symbolizes the children who went to residential schools and were taken away from their families," she said. "It shows that we support them and we care for them."