The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council’s (NTC) Teechuktl Mental Health team and Quu’asa staff are gearing up for this year’s Christmas Feed the People. 

Through food donations, the event will be providing 300 meals to anyone in need in Port Alberni on Dec. 8.

“Christmas is a time of year that's supposed to be happy,” said Irene Robinson, Teechuktl’s Quu’asa southern region outreach wellness worker. “You have family gatherings – you eat together, but not everyone can do that.”

Robinson said Feed the People is an opportunity to bring a smile to someone’s face.

B.C.’s Human rights commissioner is blaming “over-policing” for the grossly disproportionate number of Indigenous people caught up in the criminal justice system, calling for the redirection of funding from law enforcement to other social services.

During art class at the Wickaninnish Community School in Tofino, Dominic Hansen eagerly volunteered to introduce himself to his class.

Despite having already been in school together for nearly three months, Hansen’s classmates listened to him attentively, as if they were hearing him for the first time. In Nuu-chah-nulth, he shared his name, his parent’s names and where he comes from.

Two years after B.C. became the first jurisdiction in Canada to bring into force the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, Indigenous leaders are growing increasingly concerned about a lack of engagement, transparency and action.

“Progress, if any, has been very slow and tedious, and we’re uncertain as to what the government is really doing,” said Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council President Judith Sayers, who was involved in UNDRIP at international, federal and provincial levels.

With the province under a state of emergency as parts of B.C. struggle with flooding from a month of relentless rainfall, the District of Tofino has activated its Emergency Operations Centre.

An activist from a young age, Lillian Howard fought for the rights of Indigenous people - and for planet earth.

She was a mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, relative, friend to many. She was a former co-chair for the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council representing the northern nations of Ka:'yu:'k't'h'/Che:k'tles7et'h', Ehattesaht, Nuchatlaht and her home of Mowachaht/Muchalaht. Howard died in hospital in Vancouver on Oct. 30 with family by her side.

Canada’s newly appointed fisheries minister has inherited a formidable task on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where a contentious relationship with Nuu-chah-nulth has seen decades of litigation, stalled negotiations and a recent directive from hereditary chiefs for their people to fish according to the nations’ own plans.

Vancouver Island and the lower mainland braced for the worst as another ‘atmospheric river’ swept over the region Nov. 14 and 15.

The  storm caused floods, washouts, mudslides and sink holes, stranding communities and claiming the lives of five people – one man remains missing. All were lost in the deadly mudslide on Highway 99, 35 kilometres north of Lillooet.

Just over a year ago, the ache in Cheryl Amos’s lower abdomen had become unbearable, leading her to seek emergency treatment at the West Coast General Hospital.

“I was in deep pain, intense pain, and I was throwing up for three days non-stop, so I went to the hospital,” recalled the Tseshaht member.

She was hooked up to a machine intravenously for her dehydration, and given Gravol for nausea, but after she was released her situation had not improved the following day, when she recalls returning with a bladder infection.

“We are a fair and independent civilian police oversight body,” reads the greeting page of the New Brunswick Police Commission, but friends and family of Chantel Moore beg to differ after learning the commission cited insufficient evidence as the reason that the police officer involved did not commit a breach of the Code of Professional Conduct Regulation.

The Commission released its report Nov. 19.