The provincial government has awarded Uchucklesaht Tribe $71,000 from its Building Community Bridges project. The grant will assist the treaty nation in its delivery of support and services to its unhoused citizens.

A new Somass Hall will be built by the Tseshaht First Nation just a few years after the last building was torn down.

The original Somass Hall provided the community with an ideal gathering place for feasts, ceremonies, weddings and much more. The new project received $3.4 million in funding from the Investing in Canada Infrastructure program, covering about 75 per cent of the its costs, while the other 25 per cent is covered by the Tseshaht First Nation itself.

It has now been nearly two and a half years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while life for many has been returning to a sense of normalcy, the novel coronavirus is very much still around. And with the 2022-2023 school year starting on September 6, it’s time for many parents to look at the provincial government’s COVID-19 plan for a return to schools.

Residents of Ahousaht are seeing heavy equipment busy on their main streets as work crews finish paving the remaining 75 per cent of gravel roads over the last week of August.

“It was a health and safety thing,” said former elected chief Greg Louie.

People in the community suffer from asthma and other respiratory conditions that are aggravated by road dust in the summer, or poor drainage and the mold it causes in the wet season.

A young woman clutches a photograph to her chest as she lights a candle at a table decorated in purple. The sadness in her face is clear as she shares that she lost her father to a drug overdose less than a year ago.

Right behind her is an elder woman called Dee. There are tears streaming down her face. She’s lost two younger family members, Ruth and Tommy, to the opioid crisis – one lost just a few days ago.

The largest Nuu-chah-nulth community on Vancouver Island’s west coast is celebrating the completion of its new Ahousaht Wastewater Treatment Plant (AWTP), making the community’s most prominent beach safe for children to use.

Four baseball players from Tseshaht First Nation were in Surrey, B.C. last weekend for the Men’s Fastpitch Provincials at Softball City.

Eighteen men’s fastpitch teams from around the province participated in the tournament at the renowned Softball City, where the national championships will be held next summer.

Port Alberni players Thomas Dick, Josh Fred and Vance Sieber from the Parksville Redsox and Ivan Thomas from the Connaught Rangers all represented the Tseshaht First Nation at the tournament.

The disclosure of internal correspondence between DFO and the Sports Fishing Advisory Board has raised conflict of interest concerns, leading a First Nations’ fisheries group to call for two biologists to leave the federal department.

Papermill Dam, a popular Port Alberni swimming hole, was closed to the public on a hot Aug. 25 as RCMP investigated the discovery of bones in the Somass River.

The discovery, which turned out to be animal bones, was made by a civilian diver, according to an RCMP statement.