“No, no, no, no, no, nooooo. How could he get away with this?” asked the grief-stricken grandmother of Chantel Moore, Grace Frank, on her social media page. Today the family received word from New Brunswick Crown prosecutors that no charges will be laid against Edmundston Police Force Officer Jeremy Son.

The news comes three days after the first anniversary of the shooting death of 26-year-old Chantal Moore of Tla-o-qui-aht.

As the largest anti-logging movement to hit the West Coast since the 1990s continues in southern Vancouver Island, three Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations are asserting authority over their territories.

On Friday the Pacheedaht, Ditidaht and Huu-ay-aht First Nations signed the Hišuk ma c̕awak Declaration “to take back their power over their ḥahahuułi”, according to a release issued today. The declaration pledges to end the 150-year period of the First Nations watching others decide what’s best for their lands, water and people.

As he continues to chip away at an 800-year-old cedar log lying by Port Alberni’s waterfront, Hesquiaht carver Tim Paul has had to draw upon the teachings he received as an artist.

“My discipline and my upbringing is that I go the distance; I complete and I finish,” said Paul as he stands over the developing totem pole.

After over a decade of documenting B.C.’s last remaining old-growth ecosystems, TJ Watt said he hadn’t come across anything quite like the grove of red cedars hidden in the upper reaches of the Caycuse watershed, near Port Renfrew.

“It was truthfully one of the most stunning old-growth forests I’ve been in,” said the co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “The sheer volume of giant cedars was mind-blowing – every direction you looked was another 10 to 12-foot-wide ancient cedar that could be 800 years old, or older.”

A government pledge to modernize forest policy, double forest tenure held by First Nations and protect old growth forests in the province amounts to the same old “talk and log,” critics say.

Premier John Horgan and Forests Minister Katrine Conroy announced the policy initiative Tuesday, June 1, coupling it with reconciliation while stressing an expanded role for First Nations in the forest sector and land-use decisions in their territories.

Horgan said the goal is to transition the forest industry from “a high-volume past to a high-value future.”

It’s been nearly one year since the shooting death of Tla-o-qui-aht’s Chantel Moore during a wellness check in her Edmundston, NB apartment, and the family continues to wait for answers.

Moore’s mother, Martha Martin, lives with her husband in Edmundston. The couple are raising their granddaughter, Gracie, who was the daughter of Chantel Moore.

Nuu-chah-nulth nations have worked in partnership with Parks Canada to ensure the safe reopening of the Broken Group Islands for the 2021 visitor season.

Indigenous people are dying from increasingly toxic illicit drugs at five times the rate of non-Indigenous people, a growing disparity that health officials blame on pandemic isolation, poor access to services and systemic racism.

B.C. was beginning to make progress against the overdose crisis after declaring a provincial health emergency in 2016. That was before COVID-19 struck.

Shaunee Casavant welcomed some provincial funding that will help her young business stay afloat.

Literally.

Casavant and her husband Tony Hansen launched Siiqaa Water Taxi, a business based in the village of Kyoquot in the Ka:'yu:'k't'h'/Che:k'tles7et'h' First Nations, in 2019.

But since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the couple’s business has been scaled back dramatically. They have only been allowed to transport members of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation in and out of Kyoquot.

A crowd assembled outside of the Tseshaht First Nation’s administrative office today to recognise 215 souls lost at a residential school elsewhere in the province.