San Diego remembers Indigenous boarding school victims, survivors
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San Diego State University students, faculty and community members participated in a live art installation in honor of survivors and victims of the residential boarding school system for Indigenous children during the campus’ Orange Shirt Day gathering Friday.
Since August, the Native Resource Center at SDSU has worked to create a piece of art to honor children who were taken to boarding schools against their will during the 1800s and 1900s. The group carved a set of four stamps of children’s feet, then imprinted them with black ink atop bolts of muslin cloth.
A total of 4,205 pairs of feet were stamped onto the material, which stretched from the bell tower at Hepner Hall to the sundial that stands yards away, said NRC Assistant Director Jennifer Clay, whose father was a boarding school survivor.
“We’ve been thinking for a long time about how do we honor these children, how do we raise awareness and also make it healing for our Native students, staff and faculty,” the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma member said.
Friday’s art installation was accompanied by Kumeyaay bird songs sung by a group made up of singers from several Kumeyaay bands. The group included SDSU’s Tribal Liaison Jacob Alvarado Waipuk (San Pasqual), Jaime LaBrake (Sycuan), Blue Eagle Vigil (Viejas), Eagle Vigil (Viejas) and Dominik Jacome Smith (Mesa Grande and Tohono O’odham Nation).
At Waterfront Park downtown on Friday evening, another Orange Shirt Day event featured guest speakers Ulysses Belardes from the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians and Stan Rodriguez from the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel.
The event was organized by the Indigenous Sovereign Nations employee resource group, a new effort from Native and non-Native staff at the San Diego County Administration Center, said Maria Whitehorse, a social services staff member who is Paiute and Teco.
Orange Shirt Day began in 2013 as way to honor those directly impacted by Indigenous boarding schools, as well as those who experienced the intergenerational trauma related to the harm they caused.
Started by a Canadian nonprofit, the inspiration for the name came from Phyllis Jack Webstad, a survivor from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation in British Columbia who recalled having a shiny orange shirt her grandmother bought her taken away when she arrived at the school. She never saw it again.
“The color orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing,” Webstad wrote about her experience.
Boarding schools for Indigenous children stem from policies enacted between 1819 and the 1970s.
Native American children were removed from their homes, brought to the schools — which were often far away from tribal lands — and forced to assimilate to European American culture.
“They tried to make them forget their culture, they’d chop off their hair — they weren’t even allowed to speak their own language,” said Evalina Chavez from the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians.
In San Diego, the St. Anthony’s Industrial School for Indians was in operation from 1886 until 1907, according to the San Diego History Center.
Indigenous children from San Diego County were also taken to the Sherman Institute in Riverside, which opened in 1892. Today, it still operates as an off-reservation boarding high school for Indigenous students where traditional culture is celebrated under the name Sherman Indian High School, supported by funding from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.