Orange Shirt Day: Phyllis's Orange Shirt & The Orange Shirt Story
Webstad, P. (2019). Phyllis’s Orange Shirt. Medicine Wheel Education.
Publication Place: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
ISBN: 1989122248
Also available in French as Le chandail orange de Phyllis (ISBN: 1989122485)
preschool/elementary; autobiographical/memoir
Phyllis Webstad (Northern Secwépemc (Shuswap) author), Brock Nicol (White illustrator)
Webstad, P. (2018). The Orange Shirt Story. Medicine Wheel Education.
Publication Place: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada*ISBN: 9780993869495
Also available in Shuswap as Tkwelkwlótse Te Stektitse7 Te Slexeyen (ISBN: 9781989122013)
And in French as L’histoire Du Chandail Orange (ISBN: 9781989122006)
upper elementary/middle grade; autobiographical/memoir
Northern Secwépemc (Shuswap) author, White illustrator
Phyllis's Orange Shirt: A gentle introduction
Phyllis is a third-generation residential school survivor and notes the generational trauma from this experience, saying “I never knew what a parent was supposed to be like” (Webstad, n.d.). She fought against this cycle, however, and although she was only 13 years old when she became a mother (ibid), she was determined to raise her son herself (and did so with the help of her aunt).
In 2013, Phyllis spoke publicly for the first time about her memories of attending St. Joseph Mission Residential school, recalling how on her first day of school she was stripped of her clothing, including her new orange shirt, and was issued a school uniform in exchange. Being so young, she was afraid to be away from her home and didn’t understand why her beautiful new shirt had been taken away. This message was turned into a movement—Orange Shirt Day—as well as a couple of books.
Phyllis’s Orange Shirt is a simplified adaptation of The Orange Shirt Story. A valiant effort was made to condense Phyllis’s experience into a poem intended for a very young audience, but unfortunately it falls a little flat, and feels almost too cheery for the topic at hand. I recommend paraphrasing the text and talking about the pictures, which have also been adapted from the original story to remove scarier images. The pictures make it clear that the setting is rather modern, which is important because it reinforces the fact that residential school programs are not relegated to the distant past and that "Indians are modern people" (Tingle, 2010, author's note).
Because Phyllis's Orange Shirt is only available in English and French, it seems her target audience for this book are non-Indigenous children. While the parts of Phyllis’s story that she shared are rather tame—and have been criticized as being too positive—in comparison to other experiences shared about residential schools, it’s important to recognize that not every child had horrific experiences at school, but that the very act of being forcibly distanced from your family, home, and culture is trauma enough. Phyllis’s story doesn’t need to be worse than anyone else’s experience to count.
Phyllis's goal with this book seems to be to bring awareness to Orange Shirt Day, a holiday inspired by her story, and which officially became a statutory holiday in Canada in 2021. The tagline for Orange Shirt Day is "Every Child Matters" and the idea is that every September 30, just as the school year is kicking off, students across Canada will engage in and "create meaningful discussion about the effects of Residential Schools and the legacy they have left behind" (The Story of Orange Shirt Day, para. 4). The curriculum offered on the Orange Shirt Day website (Drinkwater, n.d.) initially focuses on things like "talking about who matters to students and who they matter to" (p. 8), exploring "what things matter to them" (p. 9), and "sharing what matters to them" and what "fills them with happiness" (p. 10), slowly teaching students how to empathize with others. The first time a story centering a residential school experience is in grade three (Drinkwater, n.d. p. 38), and the story is Shi-shi-etko, which is another very gentle story offering no harsh details about residential school.
With such a gradual method of preparing students to face the history of residential schools, it's no wonder Webstad felt she needed to create a more child-friendly version of The Orange Shirt Story.
The Orange Shirt Story: Harsh realities
In The Orange Shirt Story, Granny spends more time preparing Phyllis for residential school. Unlike in Phyllis's Orange Shirt, the trip to town to purchase the shirt is obviously on a different day and Phyllis dreams about wearing it on the first day of school for weeks, showing that despite all the negative things she'd heard about residential school and how nervous she was to live away from home, she was still excited about this new experience.
The Orange Shirt Story is a lot more honest about Phyllis's treatment at the school, showing her being forced to shower and having her hair cut, and talking about the kids eating wild onions to supplement the poor meals they are given. By comparing the covers you can see how much The Orange Shirt Story has been toned down for Phyllis's Orange Shirt; even the sky goes from stormy to sunny.
Phyllis attended residential school in the 1970s, and her school had gone through several transitions in how it was administrated since it opened its doors in 1886. By the 1970s, Indigenous children at St. Joseph Mission Residential school were no longer educated separately from White students. They merely boarded at the residential school— away from their families—and were bussed to the local public school every day. Webstad notes that her teacher made "being at school bearable," but that she and the other students were lonely because they had been taken from their families and were forced to live somewhere where "no one would listen" or cared how they were feeling.
Phyllis talks about how miserable she was at the school, but in the end—after 300 sleeps—she returns home to the "place where she mattered" (Webstad, 2018, final opening) and we see her running across a field to her granny's outstretched arms. She tells us that she never had to go back to the school again, though it's unclear why she didn't have to go back. She does acknowledge, however, that "not every child was as lucky as Phyllis" (Webstad, 2018, final opening), which seems to reopen the story for readers, potentially making them curious about and receptive to other accounts, while at the same time giving a sense of closure to Phyllis's personal story.
Works Cited:
Drinkwater, R. (n.d.). A kindergarten to grade 6 curriculum. Orange Shirt Day. https://www.orangeshirtday.org/uploads/7/9/8/7/79871818/orange_shirt_day_kindergarten_to_grade_6_curriculum.pdf
The Story of Orange Shirt Day. (n.d.). Orange Shirt Day. Retrieved July 31, 2021, from https://www.orangeshirtday.org/about-us.html
Tingle, T. (2010). Saltypie: A Choctaw Journey from Darkness into Light (1st edition). Cinco Puntos Press.
Webstad, P. (n.d.). Phyllis (Jack) Webstad’s Story in Her Own Words. Orange Shirt Day. Retrieved July 31, 2021, from https://www.orangeshirtday.org/phyllis-story.html