About Orange Shirt Day

Orange Shirt Day background and history

Orange Shirt Day is celebrated annually on September 30. It honors the indigenous Canadian children who were sent to residential schools and forced to assimilate into the dominant Canadian culture. American Indian and Alaska Native communities have honored Orange Shirt Day in solidarity. Many tribal families in the U.S. experienced the same residential system, which was called the “Indian boarding school system” in the United States.

• According to a U.S. Department of the Interior 2022 report, between 1819 and 1969, the federal Indian boarding school system operated over 400 schools across 37 states or then-territories, including in Alaska and Hawaii.
• More than 40 of these boarding schools were in New Mexico — the third highest in the United States, behind Oklahoma and Arizona. 
• As early as 1859-1860, boarding schools were established on reservations in Washington and Oregon. The first was at Fort Simcoe on the Yakama Reservation in Washington. In 1874, a boarding school was built at Warm Springs in Oregon. Others were built later at Siletz, Grand Ronde, Klamath and Umatilla. 
• Today, Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon is an accredited high school that serves American Indian and Alaska Native students. Chemawa is the oldest continuously operated off-reservation boarding school in the United States.

The federal Indian boarding school system used systematic, militarized and identity-alteration methods in an attempt to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children through education. This included things like renaming children from Indian to English names; cutting the hair of Indian children; discouraging or preventing children from using their languages, religions and cultural practices; and organizing children into units to perform military drills.

Each year, Orange Shirt Day opens a global conversation on all aspects of the residential/Indian boarding school system. It is an opportunity for meaningful discussion about the effects of these schools and the legacy they have left behind. It is also a day to reaffirm that survivors matter, as do others who have been affected. Every Child Matters, even if they are an adult, from now on. This day reminds us to support survivors and stand against all forms of racism — including systemic racism and bullying — in our societies.