Phyllis Webstad

It was April 2013, in Williams Lake, British Columbia.

Former students of St. Joseph's Mission residential school had gathered. They had come to remember.

A woman spoke. Her name was Phyllis Webstad. For the first time, she told her story in public.

It was the story of an orange shirt.

Phyllis was born on July 13, 1967, on the Dog Creek reserve, about 85 kilometres south of Williams Lake.

She is Northern Secwépemc, of the Stswecem'c Xgat'tem First Nation.

She grew up mostly with her grandmother, at Dog Creek. The house had no electricity and no running water.

Her grandmother taught her the ways of her people. Fishing. Picking berries. Preserving food.

She did not have much money. Even so, for school, she bought her a new outfit.

Bought at Robinson's store, the outfit included a bright orange shirt, laced up the front. Phyllis found it so bright, so exciting.

On September 30, 1973, she was six years old. She was sent to St. Joseph's Mission residential school, near Williams Lake.

Her mother had been there before her. Her grandmother too. Each of them for ten years.

On arrival, the staff took away her clothes. The orange shirt too.

It was never given back.

She told of it later:

Around her, other little ones were crying. No one seemed to care.

Ever since, she says, the colour orange reminded her that her feelings did not matter.

She stayed one year at the residential school. The following year, a school opened at Dog Creek. She went home to her grandmother.

Forty years later, in Williams Lake, she told her story.

From that story came Orange Shirt Day, every September 30. Its motto fits in three words: Every Child Matters.

Phyllis founded the Orange Shirt Society, of which she is an ambassador. She shares her story so that other survivors may feel safe sharing theirs.

In 2018, she published The Orange Shirt Story. Other books followed.

In 2021, the Government of Canada made September 30 a statutory holiday: the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

In January 2022, she received the Governor General's Meritorious Service Cross. In 2023, Simon Fraser University awarded her an honorary doctorate of laws.

The Secwépemc have their own ways of living together, which her grandmother passed on to her. They echo Ubuntu without merging with it.

Someone once took a shirt from a little girl. Every September 30, in Canada, people wear orange, to say that every child matters.