Youth Orange Shirt Day Tee

We have teamed up with an Indigenous artist to create a custom design for Orange Shirt Day. Read the intro below to find out the significance of this design.

"Ha7lh skwáyel (Good Day) 

My name is Jessica Walker, my ancestral name is Mestl’áxwts. I come from the Squamish Nation on my fathers side and Ukrainian heritage on my mothers side. I am grateful to live in Vancouver BC which is known as K’emk’emeláy.

I am honoured to be sharing my artwork with the intersection for orange shirt day. As a grandchild of a residential school survivor and as a social worker in my community, I have seen and experienced the lasting impact residential schools have had on every survivor, parent, family, grandchild and community. Residential schools were created to assimilate and dismantle the Indian in the child. I chose to draw the four sacred plants of cedar, sage, sweetgrass, and tobacco to honour the strength and resiliency of indigenous people across turtle island. Our sacred plants are our medicines, they have been with us and guided us through every stage of life and time. As I see those sacred plants I am reminded of our ancestors and what they have been through, i am reminded of our connection to the land as the original caretakers and most importantly I am reminded that we are still here and we will continue to be here."

O’siem 

Jessica (Mestl’áxwts) 

*Cut off day for shipping is SEPT 19*

*Cut off day for pickup is Sept 22*

All proceeds will be donated to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society.

Orange Shirt Day is observed annually on September 30th to honour Residential School Survivors and their families, and to remember those who did not make it. It was initially envisioned as a way to keep the conversations going about all aspects of Residential Schools in Williams Lake and the Cariboo Region of British Columbia, Canada. It has now expanded into a movement across Canada and beyond. Orange Shirt Day was inspired by the story of a Residential School Survivor named Phyllis Webstad. When Phyllis was six years old she went to an Indian Residential School for the first time wearing a brand new “shiny orange shirt” bought by her Grandmother. When she arrived at the school her shirt was taken away, never to be worn again. 

To Phyllis Webstad, the colour orange symbolized that she did not matter. Today, she has learned to accept the colour, and even have fun with it, and now the orange shirt has instead become a symbol of hope and reconciliation. By wearing an orange shirt on Orange Shirt Day, you make a powerful statement that Residential Schools were wrong, and you commit to the concept that EVERY CHILD MATTERS.