THURSDAY JANUARY 17, 2013
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SHIPPING NEWS
MASQUERADE BALL AT MANSION
A9
B3
People encouraged to hide their identity until midnight at this Jan. 26 event
Fanny Bay sea lions see a lot of marine activity as they relax
FIRST NATIONS PROTESTS
Loss of a culture Former chief in this region points to roots of frustrations AUREN RUVINSKY
writer@pqbnews.com
Filmmaker, former elected chief and daughter and wife of clan chiefs, Kim Recalma-Clutesi doesn’t know how to solve the Idle No More situation, but she’s clear on two requirements: benefit sharing and a respect for traditions. The NEWS talked to Recalma-Clutesi Friday in Qualicum Bay as Idle No More protests and a meeting with the prime minister played on TV in the background. It was meant as a profile of an interesting community member (see Thursday Spotlight, page A5) but became about the country’s hot topic. While the main target of the protests is the Bill C-45, the omnibus budget bill, she sees the frustrations driving the protests rooted in the history of residential schools and abuses under the Indian Act and the resulting loss of First Nations cultures. “In the 1860s we lost 80 per cent of our population through smallpox and TB, virgin soil diseases, and then within a decade of that the surveyor generals ran through and 90 per cent of the land was lost, and within another decade the residential schools were set up and the anti-potlatch laws were set up — so you lost your culture, your land, your children, your religion and your population within a 40-year period,” said Recalma-Clutesi. “You don’t survive intact from that. I think some people are coming out of it, but what we have left is fairly diluted.” “I need to say this with great caution – but some of our leadership is kind of the end result of the assimilation system.” See 75 PER CENT page A4 Also, see THURSDAY SPOTLIGHT, page A5
NEIL HORNER PHOTO
Kyle Kulbacki prepares the gear for kelp planting on a 40-foot herring skiff last weekend.
KELP PLANTING
Spores to help the salmon NEIL HORNER
news@pqbnews.com
If you look at them really, really closely, they look kind of like Star Wars fighters, says Ken Kirkby, but they’re actually the very first stage of one of the oldest life forms on earth. They are also, he said, possibly one of the key pieces of the puzzle of how to bring coho salmon back to the east coast of Vancouver Island. The microscopic specks are spores, Kirkby said, hopefully the precursers of what would soon become 120-foot
long strands of brown kelp. Kirkby, the former head of the Nile Creek Enhancement Society, is motoring past Sandy Island in a 40-foot herring skiff piloted by Andy Hilke and his crew member, Kyle Kulbacki. They both work for Island Scallops, one of the partners Kirkby and his team were able to bring together in their successful effort to rehabilitate the salmon run in Nile creek. With them are Colleen Sawyer from the Royal Bank and Little River Enhancement Society members Peter Williams
and Dave Kozakowski. It’s cold on the water and we huddle in the tiny cabin, out of the wind. “Hopefully, we are going to do what has never been done before by a volunteer organization on this coast,” Kirkby said, “reforest kelp.” There used to be kelp beds in the area, lots of them, he said, but for one reason or another, they’ve largely disappeared. “When I was first here in 1958 as an 18-year-old, this whole place was full of kelp beds,” he said. See WHERE DID, page A19
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