Victoria MP pushes for official recognition of Orange Shirt Day

Victoria MP Murray Rankin proposed a private parliamentary bill at the House of Representatives on Wednesday. And I requested to celebrate the people who were forced to enter school in Canada and the people who did not enter Canada, when the day of orange shirt was officially announced on 30th September.

Orange Shirt Day acknowledged Canada's attempt to assimilate indigenous children into colonial culture. Housing school was founded in 1880 and is a government-funded religious institution that lasted until 1996. By colonial experiments, Aboriginal children left home, forcibly excluded culture and words, and contact with family members was banned.

Phyllis Webstad, Elder Stswecem'c Xgat'tem First Nation of Williams Lake, BC. After sharing her story of taking an orange shirt on the first day going to school, this word was made. Early this year, Rankin participated in the Orange Shirt Day event held in Victoria, joined the survivors of Cooper Island Accommodation School, Eddie Charlie, and introduced this event to audience nationwide.

This measure is part of an effort to address the calls for truth and settlement committee actions on the importance of indigenous peoples and non-indigenous Canadians to respect and recognize the role they should play in these efforts is.

Orange Shirt Day was founded by Phyllis Jack Webstad, a woman from Northern Secwpemc (Shuswap) who confiscated an orange shirt on school first day in 1972. In 2013, people in Williams Lake started watching Orange Shirt Day, receiving the legacy of Saint Joseph's mission boarding school spreading nationwide. A class examined students, teachers, and parents about reconciliation before the day of an orange shirt. They wrote them down and showed them to the library. The local WSÁNE monks came to school and heard the news of local writer Monique Gray-Smith who participated in the skeleton game which is a traditional guessing game.

Eddy Charlie, a survivor of a living school, and his friend, Kristin Spray, held the Orange Shirt Day: Every Child Matters event in Victoria. It was developed in 2015 when participating in Camosun College indigenous research project. This year, they cooperated with Victoria City and the Women's Association Bridge to commemorate New York City's pledge to settlement. (Above: Eddy Charlie, Phyllis Webstad, Kristin Spray) A local artist, Bear Horne, is training with Douglas and Perry LaFortune, and his uncle Francis Horne. Bell has kept in touch with Salish art, but since 1998 he has been engraving in full time. Horn uses traditional Selish emblems and patterns, but he is particularly interested in trying non-traditional shapes and unique symbols. At this stage he is primarily carving wood, working with red cedars, carving wood, making sticks talking with figurative sticks.

Orange Shirt Day is a monument of the Saint Joseph Church (SJM) residential school in Williams Lake, British Columbia, Canada, in the spring of 2013. It comes from the story of Phyllis wearing a shiny new orange shirt on the first day of the mission and it was an opportunity to discuss every aspect of the school every year. This day was chosen because children were home when they went home to a boarding school from their home in the year and it was an opportunity to set the stage of racial discrimination and bullying prevention policies of the coming year. It also gives teachers time to plan activities including children because we want to make sure we pass the story to the next generation.