Aaron Hemens

1 day ago | thespec.com | Aaron Hemens

After carefully stepping down a bouldered stairway, syilx Nation members stop at the edge of sq’awsitkʷ (the Okanagan River), with one baseball-sized rock in each hand — ready to call their salmon relatives home. Joined by non-syilx members from the community on Wednesday, about 20 people stand at the shore and clap the stones together. The rushing water roars beside them, but it doesn’t drown out the sounds of the rocks clanging together, or the people singing and drumming.

1 day ago | nanaimobulletin.com | Aaron Hemens

Lower Similikameen Indian Band (LSIB)’s chief asked a mining executive to “present the facts and the truth” about waste spills from the Copper Mountain Mine as the company seeks to expand its operations in smǝlqmíx homelands. During a community meeting last week, Keith Crow also reiterated that LSIB still “does not consent” to expanding the open-pit copper, gold and silver mine, which would include extending a tailings dam in the vicinity of the Similkameen River.

2 days ago | castanet.net | Aaron Hemens

Lower Similikameen Indian Band (LSIB)’s chief asked a mining executive to “present the facts and the truth” about waste spills from the Copper Mountain Mine as the company seeks to expand its operations in sm?lqmíx homelands. During a community meeting last week, Keith Crow also reiterated that LSIB still “does not consent” to expanding the open-pit copper, gold and silver mine, which would include extending a tailings dam in the vicinity of the Similkameen River.

1 week ago | thespec.com | Aaron Hemens

Lower Similikameen Indian Band (LSIB)’s chief asked a mining executive to “present the facts and the truth” about waste spills from the Copper Mountain Mine as the company seeks to expand its operations in smǝlqmíx homelands. During a community meeting last week, Keith Crow also reiterated that LSIB still “does not consent” to expanding the open-pit copper, gold and silver mine, which would include extending a tailings dam in the vicinity of the Similkameen River.

2 weeks ago | infotel.ca | Aaron Hemens

A project to create a new rearing habitat for chinook salmon along the Okanagan River is almost finished. To create the new wetland for salmon, Osoyoos Indian Band and the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) excavated roughly 7,300 square metres of the Vaseux floodplain — a wetland area upstream of Vaseux Lake by the river — in February and March. Once complete, the pond will help restore the riparian wetland’s ecological functions in syilx territories.