Founder of Orange Shirt Day celebrates new national holiday in Kamloops

KAMLOOPS — There were an emotional few moments on Friday (June 4) at the Kamloops Aboriginal Friendship Centre, hosting Phyllis Webstad — the founder of Orange Shirt Day that’s taken off since launching more than seven years ago.

“The whole orange shirt movement, from the very beginning, has been divinely-guided,” Webstad told CFJC Today. “It’s as if something else is in charge and making things happen. It’s the ancestors. There’s no other explanation.”

Webstad started Orange Shirt Day in 2013 at the time she started to share her residential school experience at the St. Joseph Mission Residential School in Williams Lake.

In 1973, at the age of six, she had her clothes taken, including the orange shirt her late grandmother had gifted her.

“I was just happy to be going to school to get something new to wear, and it’s just pee-your-pants terror of realizing that you can’t go home and crying in bed and wondering why granny wasn’t coming to get me,” Webstad remembers.

Nearly 50 years later, the federal government is recognizing Orange Shirt Day as a national holiday — the National Day For Truth and Reconciliation.

“Last night, when I heard about Bill C-5 getting Royal Assent, I just sat at the edge of the bed and just cried and talked to her [Webstad’s grandmother],” she said. “She and the other ancestors know what’s going on. They’re here.”

Image Credit: CFJC Today

On Friday, the Aboriginal Friendship Centre celebrated the announcement of a new national holiday of remembrance. The friendship centre says the recent discovery of 215 bodies on Tk’emlups te Secwepemc has brought the entire community together.

“It’s bringing Indigenous people together, our non-Indigenous people together, it’s bringing everyone together. It’s all-inclusive right now,” said executive director of the Kamloops Aboriginal Friendship Society Vicki Michaud. “Everyone is supporting us. They don’t have to be Indigenous. It’s just overwhelming.”

Webstad says the discovery at the former Kamloops residential school has prompted other bands to start looking for remains on their land. She is working with Shuswap band to utilize ground-penetrating radar to uncover bodies at the former St. Joseph Mission.

“This work needs to be done while as many survivors are here as possible,” said Webstad. “Survivors across Canada are passing every day and I hope that as many as possible get to witness what’s going on and to have some healing.”