The smell of sage intertwined with the air through the winding halls of the Podium Building, guiding guests to a room full of people wearing orange T-shirts.
While National Orange Shirt Day was on Sunday, Sept. 30, Ryerson participated the Friday before. It was a day to recognize the harm done by the residential school system and its impact on Indigenous communities today. It was also a way to continue the discussion towards reconciliation.
Students, faculty and staff from all backgrounds came to show their support. The agenda for the event included hearing from Andrew Z Reuben, (Chakwan Lootin). He is a residential school survivor who is from the Weenaybaykook Mushkegowuk region, and a health support worker with the Ontario Indian Residential School Support Services.
Orange symbolizes what happened to Phyllis (Jack) Webstad, a residential school survivor. Orange Shirt Day grew out of Webstad’s story and evolved into the Canada-wide day of recognition and education about the residential school system.
In 1973, Webstad’s new bright orange shirt was taken away from her on the first day of school at St. Joseph’s Mission – a residential school in Williams Lake, B.C. They stripped her, took away all her clothes and she never got to wear her orange shirt again.
“It’s another horrific story of what was taken away from our community,” said Monica McKay, the director of Aboriginal Initiatives at Ryerson.
“For [Webstad], it was the fact that her family wanted her to understand how proud they were of her and what a difficult choice this was to send her to residential school so that she could be educated,” said McKay. “And her first encounter is to have an act of violence done upon her.”
One lasting impact from residential schools is the higher numbers of Indigenous people in jails and prisons, as well as children who are in government care.
“We have higher numbers in child welfare that exceed numbers of our children that were in residential school,” said McKay.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2016-17, Indigenous adults accounted for 28 per cent of admissions to provincial/territorial correctional services, and 27 per cent for federal correctional services. Meanwhile, Indigenous people represent only four per cent of the Canadian adult population.
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Among Indigenous youth, they represented 46 per cent of all admissions to correctional services in 2016-17. Indigenous youth make up just eight per cent of Canada’s youth population.
Moreover, of all children in foster care in Canada in 2011, 48 per cent were Indigenous.
For Monique Daniel, media relations specialist for the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science at Ryerson, Orange Shirt Day is “a moment of reflection,” and a “time of deep pain and regret.”
A person’s childhood is pivotal in shaping who they become as an adult, Daniel said.
“These children from residential schools, they had their childhoods ripped away from them and their families and their culture and their customs and I just find it horrific,” said Daniel.
“That this happened in Canada, a country where we are so proud about being democratic and being fair and human rights, and that horrific past exists,” she said.
Leanne Igreja, a third-year student in child and youth care, came to the event because for her, as a Ryerson student, it is important to understand the role Egerton Ryerson played in forming residential schools.
She said that because the person after whom the university is named “had a big part in residential schools … we should do everything we can to reconcile that and support them.”