Why I’m wearing orange

My mother told me when I was very young, “You can’t take a culture away from someone, because you don’t have anything of value to give in return.”

My grandfather (paternal, mostly white) attended an Indian school, because it was the closest one to where his family lived. He said he watched the Native children get beaten for speaking their own language. This was my first contact with what has been in the news lately, the Native American and First Nations children who were murdered in the residential schools, and the shell-shocked survivors.

Now they’re in the news, with already hundreds of children’s bodies found buried. In solidarity with the Native Nations, I wear orange.