PITT-BRADFORD LACROSSE LEADS REMEMBRANCE WALK ON ORANGE SHIRT DAY

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford men’s and women’s lacrosse teams honored the National Day of Remembrance, or Orange Shirt Day, on Tuesday with a campus walk of remembrance. AMCC Commissioner Jeromy Yetter joined the Panther lacrosse teams on their walk. 

 

Prior to the campus walk, men’s lacrosse team member Tyrone Bowen-Collateta, and Pitt-Bradford staff member Rodney Valandra spoke to the group of campus community members about the meaning of Orange Shirt Day and the lasting generational trauma of Residential Schools. Both speakers have ancestors who were directly affected by these schools.

 

Bowen-Collateta is a senior health and physical education student from Salamanca, N.Y., and is Seneca. The Seneca are part of the Haudenosaunee Nation that invented lacrosse, which is more than a game to the Indigenous people who play it.    

 

“My great-grandfather was a survivor who fought relentlessly so that I could speak our language and embrace our sacred game,” he said. “Each time I pick up my stick, I play in remembrance of those who suffered and those who were lost.

 

The National Day of Remembrance is a day in which those of Indigenous populations remember and honor those who were impacted by residential schools. There were more than 500 residential schools in 19th- and 20th-century America, where Indigenous children were often forced to attend. There, they were beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their Native languages.

 

“Orange Shirt Day is important to our program, and to me, because it’s a day to give voice to those who can no longer speak out against the atrocities of the Residential Boarding Schools,” said head men’s lacrosse coach Scott Gwyn “It is an annual reminder of the dignity and value of all persons, particularly those who have been on these lands for millennia. I think we are fortunate to partake in rejecting the enforced silence on the people who gave us the beautiful game of lacrosse.”

 

Survivors and their descendants have adopted the orange shirt as a symbol to commemorate the residential school experience. It originates from a story about a 6-year-old girl who lived at the St. Joseph Mission Residential School in Canada, where the orange shirt her grandmother had bought her was taken from her and replaced with a school uniform.    

 

The men’s and women’s lacrosse teams also sold orange T-shirts to spread awareness for the day, as well as raise money for donations to the Orange Shirt Society.

 

“This Orange Shirt Day, let’s stand together to ensure their stories are never forgotten. By wearing orange, we acknowledge their hardships and contribute toward the ongoing journey toward healing and reconciliation,” closed Bowen-Collateta.

 

More information on the Orange Shirt Society and Orange Shirt Day can be found on their website, here.