Letter: The Conversations Sparked by Orange T-Shirts
Muckpaloo Ipeelie reflects on Orange Shirt Day, the legacy of residential schools, and the importance of learning, healing, and allyship in breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
My name is Muckpaloo Ipeelie, and I own Urban Inuit Identity Project Inc. in Blue Mountain, where advocacy takes place every day. The journey and new beginnings have unfolded with the love of many community supporters. Still, there is much work to do.
For us now, in my community, the month of September is filled with Indigenous programming, workshops, and learning opportunities. Regardless, I still get asked the question: when is Orange Shirt Day, anyway?
It’s September 30th every year.
The Orange T-shirts themselves are meant to promote discussion and awareness of the legacy of residential schools that Indigenous people were forced to attend. Students were often shipped far from home, away from their parents, to become assimilated into white culture.
Unofficially, “Orange Shirt Day” began as a grassroots movement spurred on by Phyllis Webstad’s story and her first day at residential school. That day she wore her brand-new, fashionable, and beautiful orange shirt. Upon arrival, it was harshly stripped from her body and she cried, but no one was there to comfort her or the other crying children.
September 30th doubles as National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which is a statutory holiday for federal workers. As for me, I take the day off, and I rest. I have lived through the consequences of intergenerational trauma because my mother, Taina Ipeelie, was a residential school survivor.
I’ve been asked, “When are we going to stop talking about residential schools?”
I hope never. Residential schools—however they came to be, whether “out of the goodness of a missionary’s heart,” or through intentional oppression or racism, their legacy lives on. For me, the healing is every day. I can’t turn a switch off so that the way that I was brought up doesn’t shape who I am.
It would be silly of me to ask someone to forget what they have experienced and say, “All the love you have felt—forget it and live like you never felt love,” because when you have been loved, you remember. When you have been maltreated, you remember.
And, when your family members have been hurt by colonial policies, you understand the potential systemic, dangerous impacts ‘helpful’ policies can carry.
In fact, there are still efforts that go on in other countries that try to erase ethnic groups and cultures. For that reason, our Canadian history needs to be discussed, to spread awareness, to prevent it from ever happening again in Canada.
It is not well known that the last residential school, Kivalliq Hall for high school students, remained open until 1997 in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. That would make the youngest students of this school to be between the ages of 42-46 years old today.
The last federal day school, Oka Country school, was closed in 2000 in Kanesatake, Quebec.
I’ve been told that “new Canada” didn’t know how cruel the residential schools were. However, Canada began as a country in 1867 with its first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. In 1879, he began funding church-run schools. From 1880 onward, the Prime Minister received reports from church officials, doctors and Indian agents about the dangerous conditions in the schools.
The lesson that our collective Canadian history with Indigenous nations offers us is incredibly deep. It speaks to both sides of human nature (good and bad), spirituality and religion, inner strength and vulnerability, woundedness and healing. There is so much to learn about us as people, and Canada as a nation, if you take the time to truly understand.
For me, I’ve broken the abuse cycle, but it has taken all the teachings and love I’ve been given, and all of the time people have invested in me. I’ve also had to unravel my mother’s experiences so that I could understand her actions better, to live a better life, for me and for the next generations.
What I Ask on Orange Shirt Day
For Orange Shirt Day, if you ask me what I want from you… It’s just to have taken the time to learn for yourself, so that when you wear your Orange Tee Shirt, you do so informed.
The capacity to see beyond your own experience is not just a skill, it’s a virtue — one that helps future generations. This is how we begin to break the cycles of intergenerational trauma. By becoming allies, and working together.
Thank you for your time and support.
Muckpaloo Ipeelie
MLT/CEO Urban Inuit Identity Project
Blue Mountain
Letters to the Editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of The Owen Sound Current and its editor or publisher.