A St. Albert student's orange shirt will help teach thousands of Albertans about Canada's residential schools this fall.
St. Albert Catholic High graduate Arlyssa McArthur was announced as the winner of the Society for Safe and Caring Schools and Communities' Orange Shirt Day contest Wednesday.
The contest is part of the launch of Orange Shirt Day in Alberta – a growing movement in Canada that aims to raise awareness of the residential school system by having people wear orange shirts.
Orange Shirt Day started three years ago in Williams Lake, B.C., said Leslie MacEachern, spokesperson for Safe and Caring Schools. It was inspired by a talk given by Phyllis Webstad, a former student of the St. Joseph Mission residential school, as part of the St. Joseph Mission Residential School Commemoration Project and Reunion in 2013.
Webstad told Williams Lake residents about how her grandmother bought her a shiny orange shirt for her first day at the school in 1973.
"When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt!" Webstad wrote in an account on the Orange Shirt Day website.
She was six at the time.
"The colour orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn't matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing," Webstad wrote. The feeling of worthlessness and insignificance that resulted affected her for decades.
"All of us little children were crying and no one cared."
Orange Shirt Day calls on Canadians to wear an orange shirt on Sept. 30 to recognize the harm done to residential school students and show a commitment to the idea that every child matters, MacEachern said.
"Every child is a child of the universe, and they shouldn't be left out because (they are of) a certain race."
The day itself happens in September, as that's historically the month when aboriginal students were taken from their homes to go to the schools, the Orange Shirt Day website explains. The date also gives schools a chance to kick off their anti-bullying and anti-racism efforts for the year.
This is the first time that Orange Shirt Day will be celebrated in Alberta, MacEachern said. To promote it, Safe and Caring Schools held a contest where K to 12 students could design the logo for the official orange shirts.
Vision of reconciliation
McArthur's design was one of about 388 entries considered for the contest by a panel of aboriginal elders and Alberta Teachers' Association members.
McArthur said she was speechless when she learned her design had won.
"I'm very proud and very honoured by this opportunity."
McArthur said the logo was her way to share her vision of respect, remembrance, and reconciliation. It depicts an aboriginal youth, who is meant to symbolize the past, present, and future.
"I tried to convey the innocence of a child in the eyes and the expression," she said.
Framing the child is a stylized teepee with a line of stick-people on the bottom and a single feather at its peak. Feathers have great symbolic meaning amongst the First Nations, and symbolize trust, strength, pride and honour, McArthur said. The teepee and stick-people represent the strong foundation a safe and caring community provides to a child.
McArthur said she learned of the design contest through her mother, Sharryl. The two of them would often walk past Poundmaker's Lodge (the former site of the Edmonton Indian Residential School) when she was growing up and speak about how students there were taken from their homes, some never to return.
"That sadness stuck with me my whole life," she said, and gave her a lasting interest in aboriginal history.
Students at these schools weren't allowed to speak their own language, practice their own culture, or even speak with their siblings, Sharryl said. It's not a proud part of Canada's history, but it's one that we need to recognize.
"It's the first part of healing."
McArthur's logo will be displayed at the Alberta Legislature on Sept. 29 and at Edmonton city hall on Sept. 30, MacEachern said. It will also be printed on orange shirts that will be sent throughout Alberta. McArthur will also receive a framed copy of her artwork.
