Off the western coast of Vancouver Island, within the rocky shores of Flores Island, an inexhaustible passion for basketball has been breeding for over a generation. On any given night of the week you’ll have a hard time finding free court space in the Maaqtusiis school gym, as the Ahousaht community continues its love affair with a sport normally associated with North America’s inner cities.

“In Ahousaht basketball is a way of life,” said resident Tom Campbell. “When they’re two or three years old they start throwing a ball through a hoop.”

“He’s given so much to so many, recognition of him is long overdue,” said Shelley Harding, the Alberni Valley Museum’s coordinator and education curator, of the late cultural leader, George Clutesi.

George Clutesi, born 1905, was an artist, educator, scholar, author and actor. He was a strong proponent of teaching Nuu-chah-nulth culture to anyone that would listen, so that it may be passed on to future generations.

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.

Niki Ottosen is founder of the Backpack Project in Victoria, an organization that provides supplies like tents, sleeping bags, clothing, and food to Victoria’s homeless. 

“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.