The northern communities are waking up to the exciting and happy news that kʷiisaḥiʔis (kwee-sa-hay-is), the orphaned baby orca, has left the lagoon that she has been her home since mother died in late March.

“Today the community of Zeballos and people everywhere are waking up to some incredible news and what can only be described as pride for strength this little orca has shown,” said Chief Simon John of Ehattesaht.

Homestyle food that elicits memories of grandma’s kitchen – that’s what Hupacasath’s Tom Tatoosh aims for in his newly launched food truck business, and he is quickly gaining word-of-mouth promotion thanks to his delicious menu offerings.

Besides the standard food truck staples like burgers and fries, Tatoosh offers First Nations favorites like fried bread, fish soup and his cheeky ‘hangover soup’ which he says is a hamburger/vegetable combination. He also offers house chili, hot dogs and homestyle burgers served with a grilled slice of pineapple.

Unfinished business was attended to today at the former site of the Alberni Indian Residential School.

For the last 14 years a totem pole has stood at the site, by the entrance to the institution that formerly ran on Tseshaht territory for most of a century. Today a plaque was unveiled to remind people that the pole was erected in honour of Tsaqwasup, Art Thompson, a Ditidaht artist who was among the first former students of the residential school to publicly open up about abuses suffered at AIRS.

Lovely red and soft pink Rhododendrons surround an intimate gathering of Indigenous leaders, non-Indigenous allies, hippies, misfits and a handful of media at Tofino’s Village Green on April 21. It’s been 40 years since Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, with support from the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (NTC), famously declared Meares Island the “Wanachis Hilth-huu-is Tribal Park” under Nuu-chah-nulth law.

On March 19, MP Leah Gazan took to Parliament Hill, on behalf of the House of Commons status of women committee, to announce the beginning of their formal study for the proposed Red Dress Alert System. The system, like Amber Alerts, will notify the public when an Indigenous woman, girl, or two-spirit person goes missing.

“This whole initiative came from the hard efforts of family members and advocates, around the country, who join together to say that, should we go missing, we must be found,” said the NDP Member of Parliament.

After being stranded in a lagoon near Zeballos for a month, an orca calf is finally eating meat provided to her, giving a team more time to find a solution to a situation that appears to be getting more complicated by the day.

Elected Huu-ay-aht Chief John Jack is praising two citizens for keeping a fast-moving trailer fire from spreading to a neighboring residential home.

On the weekend of April 19 to 22nd, Jack said several fires were set in areas around lower Anacla village by someone believed to have been suffering from mental health distress.

“There was a total of six fires but there was one big one in an RV (recreational vehicle) in the lower village,” Jack told Ha-Shilth-Sa.

“The rules are not enforced uniformly, our people are over-policed, and the federal government is pouring plenty of resources into enforcement of their policies,” said Dr. Andrea Reid.

Reid is a co-founder of the Fish Outlaws project. Funded by the National Geographic Society, the project explores the history of criminalization of Indigenous fishers in the Salish Sea Bioregion and how destructive colonial fisheries management and environmental practices have compromised First Nation’s fishing rights and community well-being

A new research project is underway in the Comox to Deep Bay region that strives to pinpoint the source of fecal pollution in marine waters used for shellfish harvesting.

Current surveillance methods in B.C. can only detect the presence of fecal bacteria in the water, but not the source — human or animal.

Andrew Sheriff, fisheries program lead at Malahat Nation, highlights the significance of shellfish to Coastal First Nations.

“They are local, healthy and available year-round and have deep cultural ties both historically and today,” he wrote in an email.