Reflecting on Orange Shirt Day

I was delighted to learn that in Tuesday’s chapel, a group of students presented on the UN Sustainable Development goals – encouraging us to connect this worldwide blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future to our own world here at Shawnigan.

 

Looking back over recent weeks, there seems to have been a focus on T-shirts – first the Terry Fox one passed runner to runner and then the Grade 12 choice of ‘perseverance’ for this year's Shawnigan Word Shirt.

 

Tomorrow is the 30^th September and it marks ‘Orange Shirt Day’ – a day when we are encouraged to wear orange as an annual, nationwide effort to recognize the wrongs of Canada’s Indian residential school system and to honour survivors.

 

Before I go on, I would like to acknowledge that we gather on the traditional lands and territories of the Malahat and Cowichan Nations.

 

For those unfamiliar with Canadian history, residential schools operated from the 1880s until 1996. Five such schools operated on Vancouver Island. These institutions attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into white Canadian culture by forcibly removing children from their families. Children were denied the freedom to speak their mother tongues or to embrace Indigenous cultures.

 

Around 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend the schools, with many of them subjected to physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Even though the schools are now closed, the intergenerational trauma of Residential Schools is present in indigenous peoples’ lives and communities today.

 

Orange Shirt Day grew out of the story of a six year old First Nations girl, Phyllis Webstad, who had her shiny new orange shirt confiscated on her first day at St Joseph’s Indian Residential School in 1973.

 

The month of September was chosen for this annual raising of awareness because it is the time of year historically in which children were taken from their homes to residential schools.

 

Canada still wrestles with its dark past of the Residential System – and it is important for us, with ‘Canadian Heritage’ as one of our core values, to know and to learn from local history.

 

So tomorrow, I invite you to wear some orange and spend a moment reading about the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools – a far cry from the three Cs of ‘Conversation, Compassion and Community’ that we understand at Shawnigan.

 

Let us take a moment to look beyond our safe and secure residential campus here at Shawnigan – and to reflect on this chapter of Canadian history and to remember the motto of Orange Shirt Day:

 

‘Every Child Matters’.

 

Tomorrow’s Orange Shirt Day is an opportunity for First Nations, local governments, schools and communities to come together in the spirit of reconciliation and hope for generations of children to come.

 

I learnt this week that first nations believe that we are gifted with three ears – the third being the heart. All of us gathered here this morning can contribute to reconciliation through listening with our hearts.

 

Mrs. Wilke gave me the idea to invite everyone to sing Renfrew’s hymn this morning – appropriate given their house colour is orange. We invite you to consider the message in the first verse.

For, with a commitment to forgiveness, reconciliation and compassion, we can help to

‘Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;

Drive the dark of doubt away…’

 

By listening and acknowledging the dark despair of the past, we may hopefully begin to build relationships and communities that will continue to move us forward – move towards the ‘light of day’.

29^th September 2018

Richard D A Lamont

Headmaster