In this piece by Kris Dubé with The Welland Tribune, Niagara College is highlighted for their efforts to raise awareness about residential schools during Orange Shirt Day. The day is a movement which started in 2013 and was inspired by Phyllis Webstad, a survivor of a residential school in Mission, B.C., who recalls being stripped of a shiny orange shirt she wore one day in the mid-1970s at the institution.

NC students were among the groups across the country who held events in solidarity with Indigenous people impacted by the residential school system that removed Indigenous children from their culture.

Quoted in the article is social services student Ashley Pitawanakwat, a mother of three from Six Nations. Pitawanakwat referred to herself as a “third-generation survivor,” explaining that her grandparents and great-grandparents  were in the residential school system. Pitawanakwat discusses the negative impact it had on her life generations later and her efforts to change the cycle.