‘I was crying out there’: Residential School survivor during Orange Shirt Day
In 2013, survivor Phyllis Jack Webstad shared her experience of when she had her new orange shirt taken away during her first day of residential school. Since then, Orange Shirt Day is a day to educate people about the residential school system and the impact it still has on Indigenous communities in Canada.
Yet one local survivor from the former school system sees it as a day for healing.
Evelyn Burns, a 73-year-old Indigenous woman, spent nine years in a northeast Saskatchewan residential school. Burns took part in Orange Shirt Day along with her grandchildren and great grandchildren on Sept. 28 at Cumberland College in Melfort, and said it felt good in her heart to see so many different people out for it.
“I was crying out there seeing little people all around,” Burns said. “It made me feel so good, I’m so proud. That’s what we need and what truth and reconciliation is about.”