By Shaun Scott, Puyallup Tribal News
A sea of orange was on display at Winners Gym at the sixth annual Orange Shirt Day event hosted by the Children of the River Child Advocacy Center on Sept. 30.
Puyallup Tribal Members and individuals from various Tribes were in attendance for the event, honoring Indigenous children who were forced into residential boarding schools across Canada and the United States. The day acknowledged the atrocities of the past and celebrated the resilience of Indigenous people. Multiple people were invited to speak in front of the crowd, sharing their stories of generational trauma.
Heritage Division Manager Connie McCloud said many of the children who were taken to boarding schools never came home.
“The boarding schools across the United States and Canada clearly made an effort at genocide for our people. They removed our children. With our people, we are still related in one way or another to all of those children. Those children are not forgotten,” McCloud said. “What we are doing is passing down those teachings that they tried really hard to banish from our children. We’re still teaching, we’re still learning, we’re still growing and we’re still healing.”
Program Manager/Forensic Interviewer Carmelita Smith said Orange Shirt Day is important to every Indigenous person.
“We were all impacted in the same way by having our children taken away, abused, taught to abuse one another and then indentured after they were supposed to be released,” Smith said. “So, what happens is that left us generations of parentless children with the immediate goal of eradicating our culture, our spirituality and our individuality as Native peoples.”
Spirit Lake Tribal Member (North Dakota) Anthony Bluehorse gave the opening prayer and shared a song to open the event.
“It is always an honor to be asked to do the prayer. It is something I hold near and dear to my heart, not only as a community member, but as a father of children and grandchildren from the Puyallup Tribe,” Bluehorse said. “Tribes from all over are taking this day to remember our children and our relatives that endured the residential schools, the boarding schools. This is one of the many events throughout our nations that bring us together to show that unity.”
Josh Caldwell, a member of the Squamish Nation in British Columbia, was the first speaker of the evening.
“I live here in the Puyallup Tribal community. My grandma experienced the traumas of boarding school. It’s a direct affect to me from my great-grandparents and on down. I know the people and have seen people that went through it,” Caldwell said.
Former Chief Leschi Schools teacher Bart Brewer said his great-grandfather was placed in a boarding school in Chemawa (Oregon).
“The boarding schools caused a separation in our family. My mom went to a public school in Puyallup and she said to me a long time ago, ‘What do you mean they (Natives) got removed from their families?’ This is not being taught in the public schools,” Brewer said.
Smith said she was glad to see so many different people come out to share their stories.
“It is a safe space and people know that they are coming here to hear healing stories, hear how people broke those cycles and apply those things to their own families,” Smith said.
