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Orange Shirt Day recounts trauma of boarding schools, looks toward cultural revitalization
Alaska Native survivors of forcible removal from families say healing is in new generations; youth events planned Wednesday
By Ellie Ruel and Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
This story has been updated to correct the location of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
Stories of survival and generational healing by Indigenous children and their families were shared among hundreds of people in Juneau on Sunday, in observance of the upcoming Orange Shirt Day on Wednesday.
A trio of weekend events, occurring for the first time during a historically significant year for Orange Shirt Day, were held in recognition of the trauma of Indigenous children who suffered abuse after being forcibly sent to boarding schools. People also gathered to remember children who didn’t return home.
This year the remains of 12 children sent to a Pennsylvania boarding school who were buried more than a century ago, including four from Alaska, are being returned to their communities to coincide with the traditional Sept. 30 observance of Orange Shirt Day. That date was selected because it was the time of year when children were historically taken from their homes.
A local Orange Shirt Day observance on Wednesday with multiple activities hosted by the Haa Tóoch Lichéesh Coalition is scheduled from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Zach Gordon Youth Center.
About 80 people listened to a firsthand account during a community potluck at the Tlingit and Haida Community Hall early Sunday afternoon. Kaaháni Rosita Worl, president of Sealaska Heritage Institute, delivered a keynote speech recounting her experiences being forced into the Haines House boarding school at six years old.
“From what is publicly known of my life, it may appear that I have been resilient and had overcome my trauma. I have tried to suppress my memories of those three years and have been fairly successful. However, in reality and in truthfulness, I know that those three traumatic years took their toll on me in ways that have not been apparent to others,” she said. “I am one of the multitudes of survivors of boarding schools that have caused generations of trauma.”
Worl said a woman in a taxi took her from her Petersburg home without telling her grandparents, forcing her onto a plane and boat to Haines.
“My next memories are being in bed, still crying, and looking out the window, and seeing the moon over the mountain. I kept wondering, ‘why am I here?’” Worl said. “I learned that Haines House was an orphanage, which made no sense since I had a large extended family who had cared for me after my mother died.”
During her years at the Haines House, Worl faced countless acts of abuse and was made to do difficult and dangerous “chores.”
“I had to wait awake and get out of bed long before others,” she said. “I was required to make toast in a large oven. I would crawl onto the oven door and lay the bread on the shelves, which I had pulled out from the heated oven. After a few moments, I would have to then turn the bread over to toast the other side. I also had to iron sheets in the large commercial mangle. I would have to stand on a chair to put the sheets on the large rollers and put that heated mangle down.”
Once her aunt started working at Haines House, she no longer had to iron sheets. The children there were sometimes “rented out,” and Worl recalled that her grandparents would do this on good days.
The Presbyterian missionaries in charge of the school used to have other students laugh when Worl spoke Lingít.
“This was one of the methods the Christians had devised to manipulate students into shaming other students as a means of suppressing Native language and culture,” she said.
Collective punishment was also used, she said. Older children were forced to beat the others if they misbehaved. Worl said she often wondered what happened to a girl who walked around looking “comatose” who suddenly disappeared.
Worl cited an epigenetic study by the University of Illinois and Sealaska Heritage Institute that found genetic changes in Alaska Native populations due to historical traumas.
“Can you imagine that the trauma of your parents becoming apparent in our children's DNA, their DNA is changed as a result of that?” Worl asked her listeners at the potluck.
The study also found that stronger connection to culture and traditions was associated with better overall well-being. After Worl spoke, the Yées Ḵu.oo Dancers performed healing songs, inviting the crowd to join them in dance.
Participants received orange shirts with a blue heart design by Mike Kinville. He created the design in 2021, after the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found in a mass grave at the Kamloops Indian Reservation School. S’eiltin Jamiann Hasselquist, one of the event’s organizers, explained that the blue heart represented healing. Hasselquist learned about the symbol from Tracy Thomas, a teacher at Valleyview Secondary School in British Columbia.
“She said, ‘They're calling themselves the Blue Generation, the healing generation,’” Hasselquist explained. “We know the orange shirt is for our survivors, for those who didn't come home, and this blue heart, we said, allows them to allow us — the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, of the survivors and their descendants — to speak our own truths.”
After speeches, Hasselquist said it’s been meaningful to watch the next generation embrace their culture.
“It's all beautiful, especially to watch the kids learning the language, with them speaking it, and dancing, and having all the opportunities that we didn't have that we were shamed for. Because I grew up being shamed,” she said. “I remember being at the first Celebration, feeling ashamed of who I was. Now we have an ambulance that has our formline on it, you know? There are signs downtown that have formline on it. We can go around and see ourselves.”
She said her generation is a “missing generation.”
“We're still a missing generation, trying our hardest to learn the language and watching other people learn it around us,” she said. “I have non-Indigenous friends who know more of the language than I do. And that's a little bit hurtful, and it also feels like something to be proud of at the same time.”
X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, an Alaska Native language expert, also looked ahead to a future revival of Indigenous heritage.
“It's time to embrace ourselves, embrace our languages, to make them return to who we are as people,” he said, speaking first in Lingít. “Our language contains deeply encoded love for ourselves, our future generations or our ancestors. I know we've been through a lot, but I believe in every one of you, and you can get there.”
Twitchell said lifting each other up can make a difference.
“I've heard that our ancestors used to see way out in the future through our language, because they always talked about and thought about this place in reserve for our little grandchildren,” Twitchell said.
Local educator Michelle Martin teaches in the Tlingit Culture, Language, and Literacy program, where she said her first graders are learning the language.
“We sing and dance in the classrooms, and they hear Lingít coming out of the classrooms,” Martin said.
‘Walking in truth and running for change’
Sunday’s activities began mid-morning in heavy rain at Sandy Beach with the inaugural MMIP & Orange Shirt Day 5K/1K Community Walk & Run. About 100 people showed up for an hour of speeches and dance performances that preceded the walk and run events.
Megan Lingle, a clinical intern for Tlingit and Haida’s Community and Behavioral Services Healing Center who helped organize the event, noted the significance of this year’s Orange Shirt Day by reading the names of 12 children whose remains are being returned to their communities from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where they’ve been buried for more than a century.
Four of those children are from Alaska — Edward Angalook (Iñupiaq), Lucy Spaulding (Tsimshian), Mabel Stack (Tsimshian), and Tummassak (Iñupiaq) — and their return is meant to coincide with this year’s Orange Shirt Day observance.
“More than a century later they are coming home,” Lingle said. “Today we remember them. We remember every child whose name we know, and every child whose name may have been lost. We honor the children who never came home, the survivors who did come home sharing experiences no child should ever have been asked to carry, and the families and generations who continue to carry those stories today.”
“That history did not simply disappear when the school closed. Historical and intergenerational trauma can continue to affect families and communities through grief, addiction, loneliness, disconnection, violence, mental health struggles, and the way people sometimes struggle to find their way home to themselves.”
Hasselquist told those gathering at the park that Indigenous children being sent to boarding schools is not an occurrence from long ago — and boarding schools existed in Juneau.
“Canada's last federal-run residential school did not close until 1996,” she said. “Here in Alaska, the Wrangell Institute did not close until 1975. This history is not ancient history. There are people living among us today who experience these institutions.”
The speeches were followed by performances by the Tlingit and Haida Elders Program Dance Group and the Woosh.ji.een Dance Group. Orange shirts were offered, handprints painted on faces and red blankets were placed around walk/run participants at the finish line.
“When our runners return I want us to wrap them in these red blankets and welcome them home, because today their footsteps can represent those children who ran from residential boarding school institutions trying to find their way back to families,” Hasselquist said. “Some of those children never made it home.”
“So as you begin, walking in truth and running for change, think about the meaning of your footsteps. For those who run, carry the children who ran trying to get home. For those who walk, carry the families who waited for children who never returned. Carry our missing relatives, carry our murdered relatives, carry our ancestors and when you return here today, we will be waiting for you.”
Finishing third on the 1K course — just a few steps behind two full-grown men — was Isla Taintor, 8. She was draped with a blanket and took refuge inside the shelter with her mother, Shireen, who said they were there to support awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People issues and “because Isla loves to run.”
Isla Taintor, who is being homeschooled this year, said she was familiar with the songs and dances performed during the event as part of her schooling in Juneau.
The meaning of Orange Shirt Day was familiar, but hearing from people directly affected added a new dimension to that knowledge, said Kelsey Delrisco, who trekked the 1K course with her 1-year-old daughter on her back while her husband, Steve, ran the 5K course. She said the family, including two other children, moved to Juneau two years ago.
“I looked up a little bit, but it wasn’t as powerful as hearing community members speak about it,” Delrisco said. “I think it’s really important to hear it directly from them, because reading stuff online is one thing and you can get the knowledge, but you don’t really feel it until someone tells it to you.”
• Contact Ellie Ruel at ellie.ruel@juneauindependent.com. Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
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