Today's Messages

Please join the Indigenous Initiatives Caucus in wearing an orange shirt on Tuesday, September 30, to commemorate National Orange Shirt Day. This initiative highlights the realities that many Indigenous children experienced in the United States and Canada when forced into the Residential Boarding Schools. 

The Orange Shirt Society is a non-profit organization based in Williams Lake, British Columbia, where Orange Shirt Day was first honored in 2013. It reflects the lived experiences of Phyllis Jack Webstad (Northern Secwpemc from Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation), who, as a child, was taken to the Mission school in 1973 wearing a brand-new orange shirt. That shirt was stripped from her and discarded, only the first of many indignities that Phyllis suffered there. 

Wearing an orange shirt on September 30 promotes the truth that EVERY CHILD MATTERS.

More information about Indigenous residential schools in the US and Canada can be found through Butler Library, faculty in the departments of Anthropology or Social Work, and/or in the School of Education and Applied Professions.