September 30 marks Orange Shirt Day and honors Indigenous Canadian youth who were forced into residential schools and stripped of their culture and identities for the assimilation into Canadian life. The US also recognizes Orange Shirt Day due to its similar horrific history of subjecting Indigenous children to methods of identity erasure, and this year, Portlanders held a march to the city’s ICE facility.
Residential schools were developed by governments and religious institutions to “educate” Indigenous children, and the first ones in Oregon and Washington were propped up in about 1860. A facility in Warm Springs, Oregon, was constructed, with others in Siletz, Klamath, Grand Ronde, and Umatilla to follow, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia.
“In 1879, the secretary of the Interior authorized two federal off-reservation boarding schools,” states the Oregon Encyclopedia. “In February of 1880, the Forest Grove Indian Industrial and Training School opened on land leased from Pacific University in Oregon. The first superintendent at the Forest Grove school was Lt. Melville C. Wilkinson, a veteran of the Civil War and formerly an aide-de-camp to Gen. Oliver Otis Howard.”
The Tribal Affairs Office within Oregon’s Department of Human Services said residential school assimilation tactics included changing children’s names to English ones; slicing off their hair; restricting the use of native languages, religions, and cultural ways of life; and more. Indigenous children were often met with physical, sexual, and emotional torture.
“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,” according to the Tribal Affairs Office. “It is also a day to reaffirm that survivors matter, as do others who have been affected.”
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