National Day of Remembrance of Indigenous Boarding Schools / Orange Shirt Day
National Day of Remembrance of Indigenous Boarding Schools, or Orange Shirt Day, began as a day to bring attention to the damage the residential school system did to Indigenous children, lifeways, and cultures.
Beginning in the late 1800s, the US government and various church groups began establishing boarding (or residential) schools for American Indian and Alaska Native children. The children were forcibly removed from their families and cultures. These schools were intended to "civilize" Native children and assimilate them into white culture. This amounted to cultural genocide. The first boarding school in Alaska was established in 1878 by Presbyterian missionaries, and in the decades that followed boarding schools opened across Alaska. The Alaska Native Heritage Center has located over 100 residential schools in Alaska, a number that continues to grow. Alaska Native children were also taken from their homeland to schools across the US.
