As Alberni District Secondary School gears up for their 67th annual Totem Tournament, set to begin Jan. 5, the senior girl’s basketball team are preparing to make this season the most memorable of their career.

Natalie Clappis of Huu-ay-aht First Nations is a Grade 12 student at ADSS and captain of the senior girl’s basketball team. As Totem approaches, this will be Clappis’ final year playing in the tournament.

This year the ADSS senior girl’s team are going into Totem carrying the winning title from last year.

First Nations leaders and the provincial government have been working to eradicate racism directed at Indigenous people in public health care settings, after a report documenting disturbing incidents caught the attention of lawmakers in late 2020.

“In November 2020, the In Plain Sight (IPS) report was published which contained overwhelming evidence of Indigenous-specific systemic racism in the B.C. health system,” stated Health Minister Adrian Dix stated in a follow-up report last month.

The families of two Nuu-chah-nulth men have been gathering at the Port Alberni courthouse as the preliminary inquiry gets underway following the March 2021 murder of 20-year-old Clifton Johnston, an Ahousaht member.

The accused is a Nuu-chah-nulth youth who was 16 years old when arrested in January 2022. He cannot be identified due the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Members of his family were in the courtroom to hear testimony on Dec. 13.

Beginning at 11:30 today, the Alberni Athletic Hall opened its doors to low-income and homeless residents of Port Alberni, where Teechuktl Mental Health is hosting their first in-person Feed the People lunch since 2019. The broader Port Alberni community is also welcome.

A bus will be running, beginning at 10:30 this morning, to shuttle people to the hall from the Port Alberni Friendship Centre and Kuu-as Crisis Line, which located at 4589 Adelaide St. The bus will also shuttle people back after lunch is completed.

The provincial government announced last week that the Indigenous Forest Bioeconomy Program will be expanding, with the aim of funding projects that have yet to leave the pilot, commercialization, or scale-up phases.

Shalaya Valenzuela, 23, is a busy, young Tseshaht woman, pursuing a university degree while competing on Canada’s Women’s Rugby Sevens team in Cape Town, South Africa on the weekend of Dec 9 to 11.

She is part of an ensemble with members from across the nation representing the Canadian National Rugby Sevens senior women’s team. They first competed in Dubai early this month and wore the red and white in Cape Town, South Africa last weekend.

The mother of two former John Howitt Elementary students has lost her appeal of a January 2020 court ruling, which determined that a smudging ceremony held at the school did not infringe on her children’s right to freedom of religion.

Candice Servatius, a devout Christian and mother, took issue with Indigenous cultural demonstrations held at a public school attended by her children, claiming that the events were religious in nature and went against her own church’s teachings.

The Victoria Native Friendship Centre (VNFC) has launched an Indigenous-led learning opportunity that supports reconciliation through community-based learning. 

The Community Learning Program began in April and runs for about four weeks, starting with a week of online learning. The program includes an eight-hour session of in-person discussion each week for the remaining three weeks. It runs in cohorts of 15 to 20 people, with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants.

A murder in Port Alberni’s poorest neighbourhood has raised the urgency for an upcoming development that will house the city’s marginalized residents.

Just before 9 p.m. on Dec. 2 police found three people injured from knife wounds, with one person who was killed during the incident on Port Alberni’s lower 4th Avenue. Police tape was put up at a unit in the Wintergreen Apartments, a building next to an empty lot full of run-down trailers being rented for low rates.

Thirteen Level 1 Carpentry students are set to graduate on Dec. 13, leaving a legacy of their work at the upcoming Tiny Home Village on lower 4th Avenue in Port Alberni.

In a unique partnership between the Port Alberni Friendship Center, North Island College and the Nuu-chah-nulth Employment Training Program (NETP), the students were able to complete their course load by sharpening their skills at the Tiny Home Village, still under construction.