Dozens don orange in Eastern Passage to honour residential school children

A sea of orange flooded a junior high school in Eastern Passage, N.S., on Monday in honour of the tens of thousands of Indigenous children who endured Canadian residential schools.

Hundreds of students and staff at Eastern Passage Education Centre wore orange shirts emblazoned with a heart and the phrase "every child matters."

The bold shirts were worn at this school and others across the country as part of Orange Shirt Day.

Brittany Pennell, an Indigenous fine arts educator with the Halifax Regional Centre for Education, said she was taken aback by the student's passion and participation.

"It's very touching. I keep getting goosebumps continuously," said Pennell, who helped organize the event.

"These kids are phenomenal, and they're spreading the message so strongly and I can't envision it in a better way."

The colour orange is a reference to the shirt worn by a six-year-old Phyllis Webstad on her first day at a residential school in the early 1970s. The new shirt, purchased by her grandmother, was taken from her by school officials and never returned.

"The color orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn't matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing," Webstad wrote on the Orange Shirt Day website.

"All of us little children were crying and no one cared."

Webstad started Orange Shirt Day in 2013.

Hailey Read, a Grade 7 student, shared Webstad's story over a microphone as part of a special student presentation at the school.

After the assembly, Read said Orange Shirt Day helps educate young people about residential schools.

"I just think it helps you be put in their shoes and how they were hurt and abused," said Read, who is Oji-Cree. "Every school should be doing Orange Shirt Day every year."

Terry Drysdale, an Aboriginal student support worker at the school who helped organize the event, said originally they had planned to make orange pins to mark the day. But it quickly snowballed into an effort involving hundreds of T-shirts and a school-wide assembly.

"The biggest thing is that the students did it all. All of the shirts that you saw today were made by students," said Drysdale, a Mi'kmaw from Millbrook, N.S.

Pennell said they worked with a local non-profit organization who does screen printing to provide gear and a demo, and they put the Indigenous student population to work to print hundreds of T-shirts.

She said they also made hand drums with 16 students, which will be kept at the school.

Thousands of Indigenous children went into Canadian residential schools and never came back. Tens of thousands of other children who didn't die in those institutions were left with physical and emotional trauma that continues to affect First Nations families and communities.

Drysdale said he would love to see Orange Shirt Day observed at every school in Nova Scotia.

"Residential schools were just closed back in 1996, so it's still fresh in our minds," he said. "I'm really proud that everybody [at our school] took part in this."