Fashion with Trend
Content warning: This story discusses residential schools and violence against Indigenous people. Canada’s Residential School Survivors and Family Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day at 1-866-925-4419. This article was originally published on September 29, 2021 and has been updated. In 1973, a six-year-old Phyllis Webstad was preparing for her first day at St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School in British Columbia. In anticipation of the big day, her grandmother took to buy a new outfit. She picked out a bright, shiny orange shirt, which matched the excitement she felt to be going to school. But when she arrived at the Mission, she was stripped of her own clothes and her orange shirt was taken from her, never to be seen again. Webstad, a Northern Secwpemc (Shuswap) from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation, is one of many survivors of Canada’s residential school system. In 2013, she founded Orange Shirt Day, recognized on September 30, as a way of acknowledging the traumati...