TISDALE — Approximately 600 community members came out to Tisdale’s first Orange Shirt Day, honouring and remembering the victims of residential schools and to create bridges for reconciliation.
According to the official Orange Shirt Day resource guide, the explicit goal of residential schools was to “civilize and Christianize” the children and to teach them basic trades for the boys and domestic skills for the girls.
“The system was based on a colonial, racist world view that Euro-Canadian society was superior and First Nations culture and people were inferior,” the document reads.
Orange Shirt Day is named after Phyllis Webstad, a residential school survivor who had her orange shirt stolen from her at her first day in a residential school.
Tisdale held their first event on Sept. 26, organized by Cumberland College. Youth came out from the Tisdale Elementary School, Tisdale Middle and Secondary School (TMSS) and Kinistin Saulteaux Nation to attend the event — filling out the length and width of the football field in the town.
Together, the community members took part in a traditional Indigenous round dance.
Bobbi Tray, director of programs and services for Cumberland College, said she’s satisfied with the turnout.
“It’s amazing to see 600 people wrapping their arms around the message that every child matters,” Tray said.
“We’ve been doing the round dance for three years in Melfort and Nipawin and we asked that we could extend it out to our Tisdale campus, so we asked our partners to join us from the schools and we have an amazing turnout.
She said she wants the youth to learn that by wearing orange shirts that they’re coming together to acknowledge the past and honour residential school survivors and the youth who didn’t make it home.
“Tisdale joined us in Melfort the last couple years and they were really interested in planting that seed here, so we’re excited to be here leading it.”
Tray hopes to double the numbers of attendees by 2020.
