Orange Shirt Day promotes awareness about the Native American residential school system still impacting Native American communities in the United States and Canada. The Native American boarding schools, established in the 19th century, were developed as an assimilation method to teach native children Euro-American ways. Residential schools stripped Native American children of their culture, including their language, customs, music, and traditions. In 1879, Civil War veteran Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt built Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Eventually, 29 states would operate 367 schools in the United States. In 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed, which gave Native American parents the right to withdraw/deny the placement of their children in schools off the reservation. Unfortunately, some schools would continue to operate well into the 1970s, with the last school officially closing in the 1990s. These schools were not good places to be, and the punishments rarely fit the magnitude of the infraction. If a child was caught practicing a part of their culture, even if it was speaking in their language, they were severely punished. Punishments were often brutal, and included solitary confinement, flogging, withholding food, whipping, and slapping. If a wound was left unattended, the wound would cause infection, and in some cases, death. The rooms that the children were staying in were also overcrowded and poorly built, resulting in the spread of deadly infections including tuberculosis and the eye disease trachoma. In all, more than 500 Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiian children died over the course of 150 years in the boarding schools. Excavations unearthed the remains of children on school properties in both the US and Canada, and many of these graves have little or no record identifying the children, and their tragic fates were never reported until now. Some Native American children never returned home, while others were never heard from again. The process of returning the remains to their families has yet to be completed, and illuminates an in-humane part of American history. Wear an orange shirt today to show your support for those in the Native American community, and your support for those who didn’t escape the impact the trauma left on them. To read more about Orange Shirt Day, click here!
