Each year on September 30, Orange Shirt Day offers an opportunity to remember the Native children who were taken from their families, communities, languages, cultures, and ways of life through residential and boarding school systems.
Orange Shirt Day began with the story of Phyllis Webstad, a Northern Secwépemc woman in Canada. When she arrived at residential school as a young child, the new orange shirt her grandmother had given her was taken away. Her story became a symbol of what was taken from generations of Indigenous children and gave rise to the message Every Child Matters.
Although Orange Shirt Day began in Canada, its meaning resonates deeply in the United States. For generations, American Indian and Alaska Native children were also removed from their families and Tribal Nations and sent to government- and church-operated boarding schools. Children were often prohibited from speaking their languages, practicing their cultures, wearing traditional clothing, or maintaining the relationships that connected them to their people.
The consequences did not end when the boarding school era ended.
The history of Native child removal is also part of the history of child welfare in the United States. For decades, Native children continued to be removed from their families and communities at extraordinarily high rates and placed outside of their Tribes. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was enacted in response to that crisis and affirmed an essential truth: Tribal Nations have a sovereign interest in their children, families, and future generations.
For those of us working within the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), Orange Shirt Day is not only a day of remembrance. It is also a reminder of our responsibility.
Our decisions take place within a history that Native families and Tribal Nations have not forgotten. When public systems make decisions about Native children without recognizing Tribal sovereignty, engaging Tribes early, or understanding the importance of kinship, culture, language, community, and belonging, those decisions do not occur in a historical vacuum.
This is one reason the work of DCYF’s Office of Tribal Relations (OTR) is grounded in government-to-government relationships with Washington’s federally recognized Tribes and in strengthening understanding of Tribal sovereignty across the agency.
Tribal engagement is not simply another form of stakeholder engagement. Tribal Nations are sovereign governments. Honoring that sovereignty means building relationships before decisions are made, listening to Tribal Nations about the impacts of our work, fulfilling consultation responsibilities, and recognizing Tribes as partners in decisions affecting their children and communities.
It also means understanding that safety and wellbeing for Native children cannot be separated from connection.
Connection to family.
Connection to Tribe.
Connection to culture and language.
Connection to community, identity, and belonging.
Orange Shirt Day asks us to remember the children whose connections were deliberately broken. Our responsibility today is to help ensure that the systems serving children and families do not repeat that history.
Across DCYF, every program, policy, practice, and decision that affects Native children presents an opportunity to do something different: to recognize Tribal sovereignty, strengthen relationships with Tribal Nations, support families and kin, preserve cultural connections, and listen when Tribes tell us what their children and communities need.
Every Child Matters is both a remembrance and a responsibility.
On Orange Shirt Day, we honor the children who never returned home, the survivors who did, their families and descendants, and the Tribal Nations whose children were targeted by these systems. We also hold close the families who are still searching for answers about what happened to their children and loved ones, and those who continue to live with questions that have never been answered.
And we recommit ourselves to a future in which Native children know who they are and where they come from; remain connected to their families, Tribes, cultures, and communities; and know that they belong.
As DCYF recognizes Orange Shirt Day, we encourage our staff to reflect on how their work affects Native children and families, learn more about the history and ongoing impacts of Native child removal, and identify one concrete way they can strengthen relationships, connection, and Tribal sovereignty in their work.
