The City of Saskatoon is encouraging people to wear an orange shirt or piece of clothing this Saturday to honour residential school survivors.
The city has partnered with Reconciliation Saskatoon for Orange Shirt Day to raise awareness of the impact residential schools had on Indigenous people.
READ MORE: Orange Shirt Day for residential school children marked in northern Saskatchewan
“We lived in poverty, and our parents basically sent us to residential schools because they thought we could get three square meals a day,” residential school survivor Frank Badger said.
“But we were still going to bed hungry.”
Roughly 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend residential schools across Canada from the 1880s until the last school closed in 1996.
Shirley Isbister, president of the Central Urban Metis Federation, said the impact the schools had on Indigenous people is still felt today.
“The impact of residential schools goes far beyond the children who experienced it firsthand. Even today, five generations later, my family feels the effects resulting from decades of cultural loss and intergenerational trauma inflicted on families,” Isbister said.
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The origins of Orange Shirt Day goes back to Phyllis Webstad, who had the orange shirt she was wearing on her first day attending a residential school forcibly removed from her.
Isbister said wearing an orange shirt on Saturday is an opportunity to bring reconciliation to the community.
“Orange Shirt Day is an important day for all members of the community to unite in a spirit of reconciliation and honour residential school survivors, their descendants and the children who were lost,” she said.
There will also be a community pancake breakfast taking place at the Central Urban Metis Federation office at 315 Ave. M South.
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