Tuesday was Orange Shirt Day, a day of remembrance for Indigenous children who were separated from their families, language and culture and sent to residential schools across North America from the late 1800s well into the 20th century.
At the Zach Gordon Youth Center in Juneau, people wore orange shirts and came together to educate young people about the history of residential schools and to celebrate Native languages and cultures that thrive in spite of that history.
There was drumming, singing, dancing and tables with crafts like beading or tea-making.
Ha’naxgm Ggoadm ‘Tsoal Naomi Leask stood at a table with a bowl of medicine — Labrador tea, which is called s’ikshaldéen in Lingít.
Leask is with Haa Tóoch Lichéesh Coalition, a local nonprofit focused on healing. She said 26 members of her family were taken to the first, and one of the most notorious, residential schools in the United States: Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. It’s a part of her family’s history.
“That’s where my grandma’s uncle escaped,” she said. “That’s over 3,000 miles away. He ran and he ran and he ran and he ran, and when he made it back to British Columbia, they hid him away at grease camp.”
Áak’w Ḵwáan elder Seikoonie Fran Houston said her mother went to the Wrangell Institute as a child. It was a boarding school in Wrangell intended to assimilate Alaska Native children into white culture. Years later, her family learned more about her time there.
“We looked at my mother’s report card,” she said. “You know what was on there? It had nothing to do with reading, writing, arithmetic, science, history, none of that. It was sewing, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, being a housemaid, and if she didn’t do that, she got punished. Speaking her language, she got punished.”
Houston said she asked her mother for years why she didn’t teach her the Lingít language. Her mother told her she didn’t want Houston to experience the violence she did at school.
As Xeetli.éesh Lyle James prepared to lead a song, with his drum in his hand, he said not every child made it back home. Many died at the schools from abuse and neglect, and the government lied to their families.
“We know that there were many families who were told that their kids ran away,” he said. “We don’t know what happened to them. They disappeared, but in reality, they had passed away, and they didn’t tell the truth.”
James said Indigenous families are left with the loss of loved ones, and that can’t be fixed. But gatherings like this, he said, help with building a path toward healing.
“We’re not forgetting where they’re at,” he said. “That their memory doesn’t leave when they disappear, it’s going to multiply like sand every time we sing, every time we talk about our history.”
And as Leask said, those efforts to erase language and culture didn’t work. There is still singing.