A Reflection on Orange Shirt Day By Shannon CrossBear
The leaves are turning on this fine fall day and soon it will be Orange Shirt Day, September 30th. It is a day where we reflect, thinking of those Indigenous children in North American that lost their lives in the boarding schools. It is a day where we raise the visibility of the harm created by those government and church sanctioned re-education, indoctrination and colonization camps. The consequences of those actions are reflected in current conditions.
Some things are hard to talk about. Even harder to live with. In our Indigenous nations and communities that are within the borders of Canada and the United States, we have been in a prolonged period of mourning. Now, we are actively seeking to embrace the hurt and begin the healing. I watch as the count goes up and more bodies are “discovered.” I watch as we bring those bodies home. I wonder about the bodies we don’t count as victims- the elder who was never told they were loved, the mother who can never laugh out loud, the father who saves affection for the bedroom, the son and daughter languishing in prison, the child starving for attention, the grandchild suffering from suicidal thoughts. That is the nature of trauma carried across lifetimes.
As each child’s body is recovered, as each child’s body is returned to their respective homelands, the wounds are torn open anew. Make no mistake, the wound has never healed. The wounds of separation and loss have festered over generations. Loss of family, language, connection, culture, and the subsequent results play out daily in our lives. In courtrooms and cemeteries, in divorces and dialysis, in suicide and substance misuse, we feel the septic nature of the wound. Orange Shirt Day is a day to dig deep into that wound, to begin to release the poison of a truth denied and hidden for far too long. It is a visible display of solidarity in the message, ”every child matters”.
Every child matters. The child that never left the school grounds and the child that carries those school grounds with them to this day. So, rip open the wound, dig deep, tell the truth, acknowledge, and treat the trauma and let the healing begin. Be brutal with the truth and gentle with yourselves and each other. We need to feel the enormity of grief, to lance the festering wound, and then apply the medicine of love. We do this by listening to the stories, offering whatever strength we can, validating the truth, and empathizing and encouraging a full recovery of a healed heart.
The leaves are turning today. We learn through natural law that the leaves fall and die, they return to the ground and enrich the soil for new growth.
Some things are hard to talk about. We wear orange shirts to remind ourselves and others that we must do the hard thing and talk about what happened. We must attend to the hard work of restoring the ancestral balance to ensure it never happens again. Every Child Matters.
September 30th is Shannon CrossBear’s last day serving as a Cultural Consultant for the NNCTC. Shannon is moving on to the next chapter of her life, a life dedicated to serving Indigenous children, families and communities. We’ve been fortunate to have her on our team for three years, offering insights and inspiration, compassion, creativity, wisdom, warmth, kindness, grace, and laughter... lots of laughter. Her commitment to Indigenous lifeways and healing, and speaking of things that are hard to talk about, have been a gift to our organization. Below you will find links to a few pieces she’s written. While we will miss our sister, aunt, friend and colleague, we know that she will continue to bring forward voice, healing and light.
Baanimaa Apii
NNCTC Blogposts by Shannon CrossBear
Commemorating Indigenous People’s Day, October 9, 2023
We Have the Bodies, July 27, 2022
Culture Protects Us, February 1, 2022.