ANGOLA, NY — On Thursday, the Lake Shore School District honors Orange Shirt Day, or Every Child Matters Day.
It is a day to remember the Indigenous children sent to residential schools across the US.
Pinwheels placed at the front Lake Shore's three elementary schools -- aim to highlight the innocence lost due to the more than 523 boarding schools across the US.
"It represents that intrinsic childhood experience that a lot of the Native American students did not get to experience as they were growing up," said Jacinta Garcia, the district's My Brother's Keeper Academic and Cultural Competence Coordinator.
Garcia and J.T. Waugh Elementary School students gathered Thursday morning, wearing orange shirts—a tradition started by residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad.
"Her story is where she was going away to a boarding school, and she picked out an orange shirt to wear, but when she arrived there, it was taken away, and that starts to introduce the younger kids to the idea of the boarding schools without introducing them to some of the larger atrocities," said Garcia.
The Lake Shore School District has an Indigenous student population of 15 percent, and JT Waugh has more than 30 percent Indigenous enrollment.
In Western New York, there were six indigenous residential schools, which fostered multi-generational trauma.
It's one of the main reasons Seneca Language Teacher Jordan Cooke fights to keep his culture front of mind.
"It's about honoring the experience of our ancestors. I got both sides of my grandparents were affected by the boarding school in one way or another and to know the adversity that they went through in their lives and to come out still thriving and being able to share and revitalize what little they had left of their culture,"
Cooke says he is now using his language and culture to teach others the importance of always remembering and honoring our origins.
"It's reassuring to know that our way of life isn't going away anytime soon," said Cooke.
