General

The West Coast Community Resources Society is hosting three showings of the 2014 documentary Highway of Tears, beginning Aug. 6 at the Hitacu Community Centre.

Directed by Montreal-born actor Matt Smiley, the film focuses on the notorious 724-kilometre stretch of highway between Prince George and Prince Rupert, where so many aboriginal women have gone missing over the decades.

But Highway of Tears speaks to a much wider audience, according to WCCRS women’s outreach worker Heather McLean, who organized the events.

K’omoks First Nation welcomed the travelling memorial to Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women in a special ceremony on July 27. The Walking With Our Sisters exhibit opened July 31 at the K’omoks Band Hall. It is the first (and possibly the only) B.C. stop on the multi-year Walking With Our Sisters tour.

Elder Mary Everson, whose son Rob is the K’omoks elected chief councillor, said her Nation has accepted a great responsibility by hosting Walking With Our Sisters.

Fifteen teams took to the links at Alberni Golf Course on July 24 for the annual Tlu-piich Games Fundraising Tournament.

This was the sixth year that the NTC has held the event, according to tournament organizer Marissa Bennett.

This is her third year as the organizer, and every year it just gets more fun, she said. “This is basically where all the money comes from to support the Tlu-piich Games. It helps us bring in sports clinics, bring coaches in and help pay for the facilities and insurance.”

A Huu-ay-aht grandmother missing her long lost classmate turned to social media in the hopes of finding her name and, hopefully, tracking her down.

Marie Nookemus attended Alberni Indian Residential School in the 1950’s. Back then she was Marie McCarthy and she quickly formed a bond with a girl from Ahousaht, but couldn’t remember her name.

So she turned Facebook and posted a photograph of her best friend asking if anybody recognized her. “I think she was a Campbell,” she wrote in her Facebook post.

Irene Robinson launched the second of an ongoing series of books on Nuu-chah-nulth life and culture at the July 21 Elders Lunch at Clutesi Hall.

Titled ?uukt’akimt ­ (ookt’kimthl in Easy-speak ­­) Nuu-chah-nulth Families, the two-book set, prepared by the Port Alberni Friendship Centre, examines the structure and life of families prior to Contact and after Contact.

Robinson said she started the project with funding from the Nuu-chah-nulth Economic Development Corporation, but she had to put it aside due to her “crazy” work schedule at the Friendship Centre.

“From the [Sproat River] bridge to the lake, there was minimum mortality, perhaps 300 fish. Around the fishway, it started to pick up, and below the fishway I counted four or five thousand.” ~ Hupacasath fisheries biologist Graham Murrell.

A major die-off of sockeye salmon in the Somass River system does not spell disaster, but it serves as a warning about the effects of prolonged drought, according to fisheries biologists from Tseshaht and Hupacasath First Nations.

An eye-opening visit to the woods and two weeks of research and e-mails to provincial forestry officials has revealed there is no policy in place and no strategy to mitigate the effects of the current Level 4 drought on First Nations’ cultural resources and species at risk.

Tseshaht First Nation has called for an emergency meeting with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to deal with a number of issues stemming from the “significant drought coupled with very high temperatures” and the serious impact on water flow in many of Vancouver Island’s rivers and streams.

In a letter today to Regional Director General Sue Farlinger, Tseshaht Chief Councillor Hugh Braker, Vice-President of the First Nations Fisheries Council of B.C., said a number of First Nations chiefs from Vancouver Island are in favor of an emergency meeting to:

Tseshaht youth had fun making things blow up on the opening day of Science Camp, which began July 7 at Maht Mas Gym.

The Science Camp program for Nuu-chah-nulth youth is conducted in partnership between Uu-a-thluk and the University of Victoria’s Science Venture program.

A series of six camps, each four to five days long, will be held in Nuu-chah-nulth communities across the Island, according to NTC Capacity Building Coordinator Michelle Colyn.

FIRE BAN – Pacific Rim National Park Reserve