Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples on the Sunshine Coast are invited to commemorate Orange Shirt Day this September by sporting an orange shirt.
Orange Shirt Day officially falls on Sept 30 each year. School District No. 46 will be marking the day on Sept. 27 with a series of activities in their schools. Shíshálh Nation will also hold a ceremony on Sept. 27 at around 11 a.m. at the Residential School Monument to mark this important day.
Orange Shirt Day is commemorated in communities across Canada at the end of September. It grew out of an event held in Williams Lake in 2013 seeking to heal from the legacies of the St. Joseph Mission (SJM) school and honour Indian Residential School survivors. One survivor, Phyllis (Jack) Webstad, had her shiny new orange shirt taken away on her first day of school there, so now wearing orange shirts has become a symbolic way of cultivating conversations about the legacies of residential schools and honouring both the pain and the resilience of survivors.
For more information, see: http://www.orangeshirtday.org/.
