General

Since he was five years old, Cody Savey remembers loving the game of ice hockey. “I kept nagging my parents to play, since I was five and it took a couple of years to convince them to let me play,” he told Ha-Shilth-Sa.

According to his proud mother, Eva James, Cody indeed begged them. “We thought it was just a phase, and we thought, ‘naw, he doesn't want to play’,” she remembered.

But they eventually gave in and went ahead and bought him his first packaged kit of hockey gear. “It was cheap back then,” she recalled, less than $100.

Kelly Sport was suddenly overcome.

He was addressing the walkers who had gathered on the site of the former Alberni Indian Residential School to commemorate Orange Shirt Day Sept. 30, and had just pointed to a building used by the school.

He had attended AIRS “and it wasn’t a very good experience. It scarred us for life... That was where the bad memories started was in that building,” Sport said.

Then overwhelming emotion struck him so he could speak no more. People came to stand beside him in support.

Nuu-chah-nulth Ha’wiih and their representatives gathered at the Huu-ay-aht House of Gathering Sept. 28 and Sept. 29 just days after five nations dismissed representatives of Fisheries and Oceans Canada from negotiations on Nuu-chah-nulth commercial fishing rights as frustrations about their lack of mandate to negotiate in good faith had reached a boiling point.

The Ha’wiih would spend the two-day Council of Ha’wiih Forum on Fisheries meeting discussing several priority fisheries issues of importance to Nuu-chah-nulth Nations.

Hundreds of people gathered at Thunderbird Hall in Ahousaht Oct. 1, honoring an invitation from Kanopit (Chief Rocky Titian) and his family.

The family was celebrating the 74th birthday of Kanopit’s sister Cecelia and they were celebrating the life of Steven Titian, who survived near fatal head injuries in the summer of 2014.

Kanopit served up plenty of food, including traditional foods like duck soup, smoked salmon heads and seal meat.

Students at Vast had a chance to learn about the history and the legacy of Canada’s Indian residential school system on Orange Shirt Day.

Nuu-chah-nulth Education Worker Richard Samuel said the event, which took place in the morning of Sept. 30, was put together in consultation with the Vast Aboriginal Team.

“The idea is to promote the healing side of the Indian residential school experience,” Samuel said. “That is what this day represents.”

Samuel said all Alberni schools had Orange Shirt events lined up, to teach students about this part of Canadian history.

The voices of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers, the voice of Canada’s bureaucracy through Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the voice of government lawyers are telling three different stories to the Nuu-chah-nulth people, said Ken Watts, vice-president of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council.

“Canada must stop speaking with three different voices,” he said.

The hereditary chiefs of five Nuu-chah-nulth Nations stood Sept. 23 to tell Fisheries and Oceans Canada Regional Director General Rebecca Reid and her staff to leave Nuu-chah-nulth territories and not come back until they bring with them a mandate to negotiate in good faith on their Aboriginal commercial fishing rights.

See video: https://youtu.be/RIQRIBSHoQQ

Ahousaht post-secondary students and graduates arrived at Nanaimo’s Coast Bastion Inn on Sept. 15 to honor an invitation from the Ahousaht Education Authority (AEA), who wanted to acknowledge them for their educational accomplishments.

Ahousaht Post-Secondary Counsellor Vivien Louie said this is the fifth annual post-secondary grad celebration and back-to-school bash.

The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council’s Annual General Meeting was held at Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ Government House Sept. 19 and Sept. 20. The theme was “Taš ii” (pronounced Tash-ee-ee).

At the start of Day One of the AGM, Joseph Tom, Quu’asa Senior Cultural Worker, explained the meaning of Taš ii, and the Quu’asa staff demonstrated a ceremony relating to the meaning of the theme, “the path or direction in life”. 

Just a few months after his graduation from a North Island Collage jewelry-making class, Ernest Smith and his wife Darlene are proud to announce the opening of their new art gallery.

Located in downtown Campbell River, Awatin Aboriginal Art Gallery was opened a few months ahead of schedule thanks to an abundance of stock the couple accumulated and with financial assistance and business advice from NEDC (Nuu-chah-nulth Economic Development Corporation).

The business logo is a native design eagle, which is called awatin in the Ehattesaht language.