Phyllis Webstad was six-years-old when the new orange shirt she excitedly chose for her first day of school was stripped off her back. She never saw it again. It was the early '70s and Webstad was the third generation of her family to attend St. Joseph's Residential School in Williams Lake, B.C. Most people knew it as The Mission. She was a kid. She didn't know that merely being born an indigenous child surrendered her to an education system designed to break down her identity.

A childhood photo of Phyllis Webstad.

“The colour 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,” she said in a statement. “All of us little children were crying and no one cared.” From the 1880s until the last school shut down in 1996, Canada’s residential school system forced about 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children to attend church-run facilities that aimed to “take the Indian out of the child.”

The students faced widespread neglect and abuse in the schools, which was examined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that released a report with 94 recommendations earlier this year. It took Webstad 40 years to find a way to re-frame her experience to fight racism and bullying under the motto “every child matters” — and by using orange.

Facebook Orange Shirt Day began on Sept. 30, 2013.