'This is living history:' Boarding school past marked by Orange Shirt Day

Sep. 30—TRAVERSE CITY — Today's national remembrance for Indian Boarding Schools — known as Orange Shirt Day — commemorates the children lost to the residential school system and honors the healing journey of residential school survivors.

It began with one shirt — the one that staffers at a Canadian boarding school took away from Phyllis Jack Webstad, when she was a small child.

Her story inspired the first observance in 2013 by survivors of the St. Joseph Mission Residential School to "create meaningful discussion about the effects of residential schools and the legacy they have left behind," according to their site.

Observance of Orange Shirt Day takes place on Sept. 30 in both Canada and the United States, during the time of the year when children were taken to these institutions.

"Every single Native American person living today has been affected by these boarding schools," said Anishinaabe elder and residential school survivor Karen Wasageshik. "This is living history."

Wasageshik attended New L'Arbre Croche Mission School, or Holy Childhood in Harbor Springs as a child. She said that for the past year, she has found the strength to speak publicly of the abuses she faced while attending Holy Childhood with her brother and sister.

In August, Wasageshik, along with dozens of other survivors, told her experiences to be documented in government records by the Department of Interior at the Road to Healing Event in Pellston.

It's been a long road for her to be able to speak out though, Wasageshik said, but through speaking her truth, she has found healing. She said her hopes is that Orange Shirt Day will provide the opportunity to help bring awareness to others of the forced assimilation Indigenous children went through in the residential school system.

"The experience has had a long-lasting imprint on my family, and community," she said, "but I hope the world is finally ready to listen that we are still here experiencing it everyday."

In the U.S., 408 Indian boarding schools operated between 1819 and 1969, according to the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report. Five of these institutions were found in Michigan under the same report, including Holy Childhood, which operated until the 1980s.

More than 1,000 additional federal and non-federal institutions that didn't fall under its definition of boarding schools, like Indian day schools, sanitariums, asylums, orphanages, and stand-alone dormitories worked similarly in assimilating Native children.

According to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, Indigenous children in these institutions faced brutalization that included sexual and physical trauma.

The institutions were often underfunded and overcrowded. Reports show that staff were not held accountable for how they treated the children.

The coalition also states many children did not survive, and those that did were stripped of their culture and saddled instead with trauma "that became intergenerational."

In recent years, since the rediscovery of the unmarked grave in Kamloops, more than 1,000 unmarked graves of native children have been rediscovered on the grounds of several former boarding schools across Canada and the United States.

Anishinaabek sovereign nations and communities across Michigan will host events today open to the community to honor and remember survivors and descendants. Some include

* Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, "Ndanwendaagan" All our Relations

* Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, "Every Child Matters"

* Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, "Remembrance and Healing Walk"

* Zagaswe'iwe: Council to address Holy Childhood, "Orange Shirt Day vigil"

At the "Speak Your Truth" Community Quilt Dedication Ceremony held by the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Wasageshik, along Anishinaabe elder Kim Fyke will share their experiences at the community-open event.

Previously, Fyke spoke at the Road to Healing event in Pellston about the horrors she lived through and witnessed while attending Holy Childhood.

Fyke said it is important to understand the misery she went through from abuse while attending the school "was at the hands of the government and Catholic Church."

Though she still gets nervous each time she speaks of it, Fyke has chosen to not let her voice be silent anymore, because "there are so many who won't, or cannot."

Healing looks differently to everyone, she said, so she hopes today everyone is listening to the stories of survivors and their families to understand the "living history," of Indian Boarding Schools.

Report for America corps member and Indigenous affairs' reporter Sierra Clark's work is made possible by a partnership between the Record-Eagle and Report for America, a journalism service project founded by the nonprofit Ground Truth Project. Generous community support helps fund a local share of the Record-Eagle/RFA partnership. To support RFA reporters in Traverse City, go to www.record-eagle.com/rfa.