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Orange Shirt Day in Juneau set for new events as Alaska set for historic return of remains of Indigenous boarding school students
Inaugural walk/run, community potluck and film screening planned Sunday; traditional foods feast and healing activities planned Wednesday
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
This story has been updated with additional information about Sunday’s Orange Shirt Day events.
Orange Shirt Day originated in 2013 in memory of survivors of Indigenous boarding schools and children who didn’t return. This year Juneau will observe the occasion with a series of gatherings at a time when the remains of some of those children are returning to Alaska after more than a century.
Local events are planned Sunday as well as Wednesday, the latter of which is the official date for Orange Shirt Day. The date of Sept. 30 was selected because "it is the time of year in which children were historically taken from their homes and their families to Indian residential schools," according to the Orange Shirt Society.
Sunday’s events are scheduled to start at 10 a.m. with the first-ever MMIP & Orange Shirt Day 5K/1K Community Walk & Run at Sandy Beach. That will be followed by an also-new community gathering and potluck from 1-2:30 p.m. hosted by the Tlingit and Haida Community Council at the tribe’s Community Hall at 3235 Hospital Drive, then a free screening of the film "Bones of Crows" at 4 p.m. at the Aurora Grand Theater downtown.
S’eiltin Jamiann Hasselquist, a member of the community council, stated she initiated the effort for the potlock and film screening because "It feels right for our Community Council to be hosting this gathering, and I am hopeful it will continue year after year."
"The potluck and film are part of creating a space where we can gather as a community, share food, remember, learn, speak our truths, and have support around us," she wrote in a text message to the Juneau Independent on Friday.
On Wednesday a litany of activities is planned during an Orange Shirt Day gathering hosted by the Haa Tóoch Lichéesh Coalition from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Zach Gordon Youth Center.
The events are occurring a few weeks after the Alaska Native Heritage Center announced four Alaska Native children sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, who have been buried at Carlisle Cemetery for more than a century, are being returned to their home communities. The announcement notes "the process of bringing the children home will begin during the final week of September and will conclude on September 30, National Orange Shirt Day."
Local event organizers are calling attention to the historic significance of that event and the children being returned: Edward Angalook (Iñupiaq), Lucy Spaulding (Tsimshian), Mabel Stack (Tsimshian), and Tummassak (Iñupiaq).
"That's why we are doing this, because every child matters," said Megan Lingle, a clinical intern for Tlingit and Haida’s Community and Behavioral Services Healing Center who helped organize this year's race event at Sandy Beach. "It matters if it was over 100 years ago, or if it's today, or if it's the people who are still feeling the effects of historical and intergenerational trauma. We are here, our lives are sacred and we want our people to know that they matter."
More than 100 Native students, including 11 from Alaska, are still buried at the Carlisle cemetery, according to the online news publication ICT.
The walk/run at Sandy Beach was originally envisioned as an event for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Day, which is May 5, Lingle said. But community members she talked to "said it would be more meaningful to host it around Orange Shirt Day since they kind of go hand in hand, and so we decided to host it."
"It may seem like these are two separate issues, but there is a connection because for generations Indigenous people have experienced the forced removal of children," she said in an interview Friday. "The separation from family and culture, loss of language and identity, and other policies that have caused profound harm. And that doesn't just disappear, and it shows up in other ways where our people are still healing from that. It doesn't define us, but it has certainly affected our way of life."
An older brother "encouraged me to stay active from an early age through running," Lingle said. She said the way that has helped her find peace in difficult moments is a reason she was interested in the race as an MMIP/Orange Shirt Day observance.
"If I'm having a hard time or a hard day, if I go out for a run and connect with nature there's healing and medicine in that, and that's something that I want to encourage our people to do," she said.
The event won’t just be the one-mile and 5K race, Lingle said. The Woosh.ji.een Dance Group and Tlingit and Haida Elders Program Dance Group are scheduled to perform, and "we have a lot of speakers who are there to share some words because this is a meaningful day."
Other activities at the gathering include youth activities by the Tlingit and Haida's Wayfinders program, a smudging ceremony before the start of the race, and orange and red handprint paintings on faces of willing participants, she said.
The potluck will feature a keynote speech by Kaaháni Rosita Worl, a 2023 National Humanities Medal recipient who at the age of six was forcibly taken from her home near Petersburg to the Haines House residential boarding school institution at the age of six. She is now the president of Sealaska Heritage Institute, and been a cultural and political advocate for Alaska Natives for decades.
Hasselquist noted that Worl was removed at the same age as Phyllis Webstad, who was removed from her family in 1973. Webstad also had her clothes taken — including an orange shirt from her grandmother — which became symbolic when she created Orange Shirt Day in 2013.
Also planned during the potluck is a distribution of orange shirts featuring a design by Tlingít Deisheetaan artist Mike Kinville called "Speaking Our Truths," according to Hasselquist. She stated he created the design in 2021, shortly after the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found in a mass grave at a former boarding school in Canada.
"At that time, I began calling schools in Kamloops and connected with Tracy Thomas, a teacher at Valleyview Secondary School," Hasselquist wrote. "She told me students were adding blue hearts to their orange shirts and around their school. When I asked why blue hearts, she explained that they called themselves the Blue Generation, the Healing Generation. We know the orange shirt represents survivors, while the blue heart creates a place for descendants of survivors, the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, to speak our truths and tell our own stories and experiences of the intergenerational impacts of residential boarding school institutions."
The potluck is free, with participants asked to bring a dish to share if so inclined.
"Bones of Crows" is a 2022 Canadian film, followed by a five-hour television series, about an Indigenous family’s multi-generational struggles with forced boarding schools and other hardships, as well as their achievements such as their matriarch becoming a code talker for the Canadian Air Force during World War II.
The Yées Ḵu.oo Dancers are scheduled to perform at the potluck and following the film.
Wednesday’s gathering at the Zach Gordon Youth Center, similar to an inaugural event last year, includes a traditional foods feast, healing village activities, dance performances and historical presentations, according to organizers.
"Partners have generously contributed traditional foods for a community feast, including Goldbelt Inc.’s donation of herring eggs, smoked fish from Tlingit & Haida's Traditional Food Security Program, smoked herring from Goldbelt Heritage Foundation, Coho and King salmon from local fishermen Patrick Baum, Deer meat donated by the Andrews family, locally made jams and jellies, berries, and other foods still coming together," wrote Ati Koon Ya Nagoodi Nasiah, executive director of the Haa Tóoch Lichéesh Coalition, in an email to the Juneau Independent on Friday.
The healing village activities include Orange Shirt Day block art printing, t-shirt and button making, Native Youth Olympics events "and opportunities to make additional items that will be gathered as gifts for Elders later this fall," according to Nasiah.
"We are also creating space for people to learn more about boarding school history and receive support researching their own family and community connections to boarding schools," Nasiah wrote. "This research is supported by HTL staff and the Juneau Public Libraries, along with a grief-tending fire ceremony for those who would like a place to remember, honor, and tend to what the day may bring forward."
A centerpiece feature of the event will be Orange Shirt Day artwork created by local youth leader and Tsimshian artist Elizabeth Anderson.
"This piece was created to remember and honor every child who suffered from residential schools," Anderson said in a statement provided by Haa Tóoch Lichéesh. "We honor the children who were survivors. We honor the children who did not make it home. We honor every child who had to suffer from boarding schools, because every child does matter and deserves to be loved and cared for.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
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