Phyllis Webstad wore an orange shirt to residential school. Telling the story helped her heal

Unreserved45:21Phyllis Webstad and her orange shirt

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

Phyllis Webstad was six years old when she was forced to leave her home in Secwepemc Nation and attend Saint Joseph Mission Residential School near Williams Lake, B.C.

For the occasion, her grandmother bought her a new orange shirt, but it was taken away when she arrived at the school.

Webstad has been telling the story of her orange shirt for 10 years now, and is the founder of Orange Shirt Day, observed on September 30. 

Since 2021, September 30 has also been known as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. 

Webstad is the author of five books, including her latest, a picture book called Every Child Matters. She's one of 14 members of her family — spread over four generations — to attend residential school.

She spoke to Rosanna Deerchild, host of CBC's Unreserved, about her life before residential school, what it was like to lose that now famous orange shirt and the complex work of healing. 

Here is part of their conversation.

Phyllis, can you take me back to your earliest years before you were sent to residential school? What was life like for you where you lived?

I grew up with my grandmother on the Dog Creek Reserve until I was 10, and we didn't have electricity. We had one tap that brought in cold water.

Granny didn't have a job, per se. And so to make money, she would tan deer hides and moose hides and make buckskin gloves and vests and coats and bead them and sell them at the Dog Creek General store, which is probably how she got the money to pay for our clothes and my new shirt to go to school in.

We lived off the land. Granny had three gardens. We dried fish and meat; canned as well, as much as we could. We had berries from the land. Granny lived to be a little over 100, so it's probably credited to her diet in her early years.

Granny was the youngest of 10. We would meet her siblings down at the Fraser River, which flows into the Pacific Ocean near Vancouver, and in the summer the sockeye salmon come up the river and spawn in the various creeks. And so we would camp — sometimes the entire summer — right by the creek, and we would have fish for breakfast, fish for lunch, fish for dinner. 

So when I did spend that time at residential school, I learned to escape through my spirit and go to where there were happy times. And so the river was one of those happy times and being in Granny's house with her. 

When you were six years old, your grandmother gave you an orange shirt. Can you tell me about this orange shirt?

I turned six in July of 1973 and Granny did what she'd always done. She brought me to town — and my cousin — to buy us something new to wear to go to school. It was the early 70s — the crazy, hippie psychedelic time — and I chose a bright orange shirt with a shoelace string in front, like with the holes and the shoelaces through. I didn't get many new things, so I definitely remembered getting that shirt and being excited.

And so it's about a two-hour ride to the [residential school]. And when I get there, my shirt, everybody's clothing gets taken away. And that's the story that I told in 2013 when the [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] came to Williams Lake, and we wanted to invite everybody to hear the truths of survivors.  

Can you take me back to that moment when you first shared that story publicly?

I didn't know what I was going to talk about the night before. And ... there was a chief, there was the mayor, there was the chair of the Cariboo Regional District, there was the superintendent.  Then there was me — [an] unemployed residential school survivor wearing orange. I didn't do a lot of public speaking then, and so it was really uncomfortable to be telling that story.

What did that shirt — or, more specifically, the taking of that shirt — come to represent for you?

That feeling was like, it didn't matter, all of us there. I was a newly six-year-old. There were five-year-olds there. Five- and six-year-olds should not be comforting each other, and that's what was happening.

I felt like I did not matter.- Phyllis Webstad

We could be sick, tired, hungry, lonely, sad, crying our eyeballs out at night, and there wasn't an adult to come and make it better.

So I felt like I did not matter, and that's where Every Child Matters originally started from, and I brought that with me. I allowed people to treat me in ways that were unacceptable. And I had to really do some soul searching, because I always felt that I didn't belong on this earth. Nobody cared if I was here. And I found that is not true.

That was when I started my healing journey in '94. And in 2013, I still kind of felt that way. And then I realized, I have every right as any other human being on this earth, to walk this land, to walk on this earth and breathe this air — that, darn it, I belong here, and I'm not going to put up with mistreatment anymore.

Now, Phyllis, you've written five books telling your story. Why did you want to tell your story in book form?

I'd been asked to go and talk to children and tell them my story, and it was hard to just stand there, just me in front of these children. And I thought if I had pictures, I could show them and I could tell them what happened and it would be easier to relate to them. So they were my motivation, inspiration for my first book, The Orange Shirt Story.

What is the hope that you carry when you are speaking with children?

I believe it's the children, the students, that are teaching the adults of this country. They go home, they talk about it, they ask questions around the dinner table. And I find that if an adult has children, they're aware of Orange Shirt Day.

All these years later, after telling your story to so many people, so many kids, and after feeling like you didn't matter for so long, what does it take to remind yourself that you do matter? 

It's just being good to myself, treating myself well. Buying that shirt that's $39.99 and those shoes that are $89, $99 — whereas before it was like, you know, buy the cheapest thing that I could find — and eat the good food and go for walks. Take naps, make a new recipe, spend time with my five grandchildren. They're learning to ride bikes, so it's a joy to be with them. 

I'm 56 now and I hope to be here at least another 20 plus years. And it's not always easy, but to enjoy just being alive and be good to myself, be good to others and enjoy a bit of life on this earth.  

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour service at 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat.