July 1973 – When 6 year old Phyllis Webstad picked out a bright orange shirt to wear on her first day of school, she didn’t know that it would be taken from her and never returned. She had no way of knowing that her orange shirt would eventually become a national symbol to honour Residential School Survivors, their families, and those who didn’t make it home. Forty years later, Phyllis told her truth publicly for the first time at a 2013 Truth and Reconciliation Event in Williams Lake, B.C., and since then she has travelled across Turtle Island advocating for Indigenous Rights and bringing awareness to the impacts of residential schools on Survivors and their families. Beyond all the school visits, articles, interviews, press tours, documentaries, public events, awards, and accolades, Phyllis is a First Nation woman on her personal healing journey. This memoir is not just a story about the effects of colonization, it is a personal reflection on the tremendous obstacles that she had to overcome in the face of severe adversity. These experiences have shaped Phyllis’s life, and she continues to be a voice for those who have faced similar atrocities at the hands of colonizers. Many of the injustices that Phyllis mentions throughout her memoir serve as a reminder of the oppression that Indigenous people face in “Canada” and the amount of work there is still to be done surrounding decolonization, denialism, biases, and privilege.
