Heiltsuk artist creates new Orange Shirt Day design to support Indigenous youth organization

Sep 12 2022, 8:05 pm

The second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is being commemorated across Canada on Friday, September 30.

For this year’s Orange Shirt Day, Vancouver-based Urban Native Youth Association (UNYA) partnered with acclaimed Heiltsuk artist KC Hall and local custom-design gift store MAKE to offer a new Every Child Matters t-shirt.

This is the third year that the Indigenous youth-serving organization is selling thought-provoking and awareness-raising orange t-shirts to support its many programs and services.

“The Every Child Matters shirt along with Orange Shirt Day are meant to raise awareness about the impacts of the traumatic history of residential schools and the colonization of Indigenous people,” said Cheryl Robinson, chief executive officer of Urban Native Youth Association. “I hope that by wearing and supporting the Every Child Matters t-shirt, people will be inspired to learn more about the truth and history of Indigenous people.”

Those looking to buy UNYA’s Every Child Matters orange t-shirt designed by KC Hall can shop in-store at MAKE Granville Island and MAKE Gastown or online at makevancouver.com.

UNYA Orange Shirt Day

UNYA/Instagram

The limited-edition design will be on sale until Orange Shirt Day or while supplies last, with MAKE donating 100% of the profits to the registered not-for-profit society. The orange t-shirts will also be for sale at UNYA’s head office close to Hastings Street and Commercial Drive.

“We have had the privilege and honour of working with KC Hall for several years and in many different capacities,” shared Robinson, whose ancestral roots come from the St’at’imc and Nisga’a Nations. “We asked KC to come up with the design. We trusted he would be able to come up with a design that represented UNYA and Every Child Matters. This latest design has a human spirit that represents not only our living children but the ones who never made it home.

UNYA Orange Shirt Day

UNYA/Instagram

“MAKE has also been incredibly generous and printed and taken orders for orange shirts for UNYA and donated all the proceeds of the shirt sales to UNYA programs. The proceeds of the t-shirt sales provide enhanced support to all of our youth programs and ensure that they remain low to no barrier. This means we provide bus tickets and transportation as well as healthy snacks or food to all our participants.”

UNYA was founded in 1988 and is Metro Vancouver’s only Indigenous youth program-providing organization. The charitable organization offers programming in the areas of health and wellness, housing and transition, community and connection, and education and training.

For more information, visit unya.bc.ca and bit.ly/UNYAandMAKE22.

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