Frontenac high school students don orange shirts to raise awareness about residential schools

Students at Kingston’s Frontenac Secondary School wore orange shirts on Thursday to commemorate and raise awareness about the impact residential schools have had on Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

For Frontenac student Chelsea Aalders-Madigan, Orange Shirt Day is more than an awareness campaign about the history of residential schools.

“Because I am Ojibwe I just wanted to figure out more about myself because my dad doesn’t really talk about it,” Alders-Madigan said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "Because I am Ojibwe I just wanted to figure out more about myself because my dad doesn't really talk about it," Alders-Madigan said.

Orange Shirt Day commemorates the experience of Phyllis Webstad, a B.C. woman who was stripped of her orange shirt on her first day at a residential school in 1973.

“It was removed from her, that indoctrination into school uniforms,” said Christine Jamieson, Frontenac Secondary’s Indigenous studies teacher.

“It’s not like our first day of school where students have new clothes. Hers was removed from her and that was the end of the orange shirt, never to be seen again.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "It's not like our first day of school where students have new clothes. Hers was removed from her and that was the end of the orange shirt, never to be seen again."

One of the student organizers — Ellie Vanbergen — says she didn’t know about Canada’s history of colonization and residential schools until she took the Indigenous studies course.

“We learned all sorts of things: how they were taken and how … they would just treat them really unfair.”

Aalders-Madigan says Orange Shirt Day is a great opportunity to raise awareness among the high school’s population.

“We don’t just want people wearing shirts we want them to know the story behind it and the education.”

The Grade 12 student said the growth in knowledge has led to systemic changes at the school.

“Around our school, there’s a lot changed, now we’re saying at events or on our announcements what grounds we share with them.”

Frontenac Secondary School is located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Nishnawbe peoples.