Orange Shirt Day in Canada

Beginning in 1883, the government began funding Indian residential schools across Canada, which were run primarily by the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church; but also included the United Church of Canada, the Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church.

It was the government's goal to absorb the First Nations into the general population of Canada and extinguish their culture.

These school attendance was made compulsory in 1894. Residential schools could separate aboriginal children from their parents and culture and cause them "to be merged and lost" within the nation. When parents came to take their children away from the schools, the pass system was created, banning Indigenous people from leaving their reserve without a "pass" from an Indian agent. Conditions at the schools were rough as schools were underfunded and disease was rampant. The mortality rates at the schools in 1906 was ranging between 30 and 60 percent. Many schools did not communicate the news of the deaths of students to the students' families, burying the children in unmarked graves. In many schools, sexual abuse was common, and students were forced to work to help raise money for the school. Students were beaten for speaking their indigenous languages.

By the 1950s, the government began to relax restrictions on the First Nations of Canada, and began to work towards shutting the schools down. In 1969, the government seized control of the residential schools from the churches; and by the 1980s, only a few schools remained open, with the last school closing in 1996.

The inspiration for Orange Shirt Day came from residential school survivor Phyllis Jack Webstad, who shared her story at a St. Joseph Mission (SJM) Residential School Commemoration Project and Reunion event held in Williams Lake, British Columbia, in the spring of 2013. Phyllis recounted her first day of residential schooling at six years old, when she was stripped of her clothes, including the new orange shirt her grandmother bought her, which was never returned. The orange shirt now symbolizes how the residential school system took away the indigenous identity of its students.

Source: wikipedia.org