La Conner students learn why Orange Shirt Day is so important

A traumatic past can give way to a healthy future.

That was the hopeful message shared with La Conner students by Swinomish Tribal Community members during annual Orange Shirt Day ceremonies at Landy James Gym Monday afternoon.

Orange Shirt Day, which symbolizes truth and reconciliation, honors the experiences and raises awareness of those indigenous children who attended residential schools in North America.

Dean Dan Jr., of Swinomish, who keynoted the La ­Conner program, shared the story of Phyllis Webstad, who as a 6-year-old was forced by officials at the Canadian boarding school she attended in the 1970s to part with her favorite orange shirt.

"Despite her sadness and crying," said Dan, "the shirt that wasn't approved of was taken away. That created trauma. There was an emotional fallout. It was a violation that presented to her, as an individual, an understanding that the way she had lived was wrong."

In Webstad's case, education became a conduit to cultural assimilation, Dan said. Residential school students were forced to cut their hair and give up their traditional languages.

"What happens to a young child's mind when your hair is cut?" Dan asked rhetorically. "What happens to a young child's mind when your language is stripped away, essentially removing your only audible communication with your known world?"

But fast forward to today, he said, when diversity, not assimilation, is celebrated in classrooms across the U.S. and Canada.

Dan credited Webstad with providing the inspiration for Orange Shirt Day and cited the singing, drumming and dancing performed Monday by the Swinomish Canoe Family as prime examples of a gradual evolution from intergenerational trauma to intergenerational healing.

Swinomish Senator and Cultural Events Director Aurelia Bailey struck a similar chord.

"We bring healing today through our songs and prayers," she said. "They tell our stories. They show us who we are.

"When they sing and dance," Bailey told La Conner students, "they are praying for you. You don't have to be Swinomish to accept those prayers."

Bailey stressed that the abuses inflicted upon residential students, many of whom didn't survive, "are nothing that has anything to do with anyone in this room."

Bailey shared that her grandfather, the late Swinomish leader Chester Cayou Sr., a World War II combat veteran, was "kidnapped" by a family member from a British Columbia boarding school.

That relative paddled Cayou in a canoe to the San Juan Islands.

"If that hadn't happened," said Bailey, "we wouldn't be here."

La Conner Schools Community and Cultural Liaison Clarissa Williams, who coordinated the Orange Shirt Day observance, pointed out that 60,000 indigenous children in North America attended residential schools, where assimilation was the core curricula on those campuses.

"This day is very important to the Swinomish community and indigenous nations across the U.S. and Canada," Williams said.

That was reflected in participation in La Conner's Orange Shirt Day assembly by current members of the Swinomish Royalty, several of whom introduced themselves in Lushootseed, the historical Coast Salish language.

The La Conner School District is uniquely connected to Orange Shirt Day. La Conner High School graduate Dr. Kisha Supernant, now an archaeology professor at the University of Alberta, is leading the effort to locate the unmarked graves of Canadian residential school students.

La Conner Schools Director of Teaching and Learning Beth Clothier, who opened Monday's program, said Orange Shirt Day is an opportunity to locally recognize and honor those impacted by the residential school system, which operated for more than a century.

Near the close of the afternoon gathering, elder Howard Patterson, a member of the Tlingit tribe of Alaska, was called upon to reflect on how residential school attendance impacted his mother.

"As I got older," he said, "I came to realize that she suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome."

Patterson alluded to the freedom today's students have in terms of self-expression.

"Keep a journal of what happens in your life," he said.

When assessing the potential for future cultural and educational growth, Dan said he draws inspiration from the example set by his late great-grandfather, Morris Dan, whose reminiscences and knowledge of Swinomish culture are part of a Northwest Tribal Oral History project collected at Western Washington University.

"He was strong enough to make it out of the Tulalip Boarding School," Dan said of his great-grandfather. "When he graduated, he had an understanding of where he was going."