In her team’s final game at the Junior All Native Tournament, eight-year-old Kai Sam played two minutes. During her brief but intense time on the court Sam faced players who were as much as five years her senior, in a basketball tournament that attracted 91 Indigenous teams from all corners of British Columbia. Hosted by the Snuneymuxw First Nation, the annual event was held at multiple venues in Nanaimo this year, from March 19-24.
It was scary for Victoria Oscar and her brother to leave their family home in Kyuquot Sound and enter the foster care system.
From age two to 16 Oscar and her brother were in and out of foster care, living in Campbell River, Zeballos, Alert Bay and Kyuquot, among other places. When they entered the foster care system, they arrived with only what they could carry, said Oscar.
Over the course of a year when Oscar was a teenager, they were waiting for “approval” to live with her grandfather, though soon after they were in his care, he passed away.
In the wake of an unsuccessful legal challenge against the City of Victoria’s bylaw department – a case that a tribunal called “extraordinary” for municipal enforcement - members of the city’s unhoused community hosted a rally on March 10 to share the challenges they face.
“There’s really bad drugs out there and it’s freaking me out, our people are just dropping,” said Gail K. Gus, Tseshaht First Nation’s Crisis Care and Wellness coordinator.
She has noticed that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, people in general have become more depressed and are turning to alcohol and/or illicit drugs to cope.
The University of Victoria has received a $1 million grant to develop a clean, renewable energy source using the power of ocean waves to supply energy to Yuquot, the ancestral home of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht people.
In a statement dated March 3, the University of Victoria said its Pacific Regional Institute for Marine Energy Discovery (PRIMED) has received a grant from the 2022 TD Ready Challenge to develop a clean energy project that captures the power of wave energy at Yuquot, BC.
A new watershed fund is being heralded as a critical shift in how the provincial government values the natural resource, with particular attention to long-held Indigenous values.
With $100-million to back up its claim, the province announced the Watershed Security Fund earlier this month, with a pledge that B.C.’s future will be different than the past century and a half of reliance on unsustainable resource extraction.
Timothy Masso and Hjalmer Wenstob have spent over a decade working together and collaborating on traditional masks, dances, and songs. In the recent years their collaborations have been used to share Tla-o-qui-aht culture with others. At Naaʔuu the two brothers shared their First Nation’s history, and their family connections.
During the first four evenings of Naaʔuu Wenstob is host; for the remaining evenings fellow Tla-o-qui-aht member Terry Dorward of the Seitcher family will stand before the audience.
Among round tables, in a traditionally inspired longhouse, Naaʔuu invites community members to gather and celebrate Tla-o-qui-aht culture for an evening.
On March 16 the evening began with Hjalmer Wenstob, co-host and artistic director for Naaʔuu, along with singers welcoming guests with a paddle song. Soon after, the room filled with sounds of laughter and conversation as plates were brimming with salmon, mussels, and bannock, an abundance of coastal cuisine made by Heartwood Kitchen.
BC Housing has selected the Port Alberni Friendship Centre (PAFC) as the new operator of the Our Home on 8th supportive housing and shelter building.
“The Port Alberni Friendship Center is excited at the opportunity to be the new operator of Our Home on 8th,” said PAFC Executive Director Cyndi Stevens.
She went on to say that the PAFC has extensive experience in delivering this type of support and service in the valley.
Federal Court has approved the terms of a $2.8-billion settlement that Canada is calling the first compensation to First Nations communities for the loss of language, culture and heritage due to the residential school system.