kʷiisaḥiʔis Brave Little Hunter (Baby Orca)

kʷiisaḥiʔis (kwee-sa-hay-is)

Ehattesaht Nation is Seeking Everyone’s Support as the Days March On.

Since her arrival kʷiisaḥiʔis has become part of the Ehattesaht family. She is like one of our children who has lost their mother and we need to get her to a place where her grandmothers and aunties can take care of her. Right now those aunties cannot hear her. She is isolated in a small lagoon at the end of a small inlet and her cries for her family only echo on the steep rock of the mountainside and never over the gravel bar to the open ocean. It is too far. A two-year-old, as brave as she is, still needs her family. She has not yet learned to hunt, she has learned to be wary of humans and rightly so. As she frantically swam nearby her mother lay stranded on the beach in the dark and at first light she was suddenly surrounded by humans and her mother never came back.

The hard part of the work we are doing. We don't know when it will end and we can't turn our backs on our kʷiisaḥiʔis. She has been taught well in her tow and half years. She is scared and she is lonely and she has just lost her mother and she has no idea that we are trying to help her. We also know that as much as we want to connect we have to keep our distance because our world is not safe for her.

But our family is small and we are learning to understand our own limitations so we are asking both the Federal and Provincial governments to support us. We have build an amazing team with the Marine Mammal Response Unit. Our Nation has called on all of its partners and they have been limitless in their response and we have been overwhelmed by the offers of equipment and ideas from around the world. But mobilization like this takes dozens of professionals, people and time. We have to keep everyone fed and housed and our community is small and isolated with limited options.

Everything is expensive here and we can no longer carry all of the burden. We can give our time in being part of the crews, of feeding everyone, of housing them but as this carries on we are having to adjust our budgets and make sure that we are all in this with good intention and with a good heart.