Biography
Ancestral Pride
Joe James ~ Gwaiina | Sacheen ~ Xhopakelxhit
Our aim as Ancestral Pride is to ensure the continuity of the land, by educating ourselves, and others as much as we can about the need to connect with our home lands; Indigenous pathways will be used to implement cultural pride, recover knowledge that has been lost, create a new way for the future. We are an actively decolonizing family involved in the frontline work of protecting our lands and waters from ecocide in the form of destructive resource extraction.
We have both been involved in several different resistance movements over the last 20 years of our lives, including the Native Youth Movement and Westcoast Warrior Society, and after we have moved home onto our ancestral lands we have become Ancestral Pride.
Our most recent win was last month in September of 2015 when ourselves and other nation members called the Yaakswiis Warriors successfully evicted a Cermaq fish farm from our waters to protect our abundant and healthy aquaculture food sources.
We have been involved in for several years now in an ongoing battle against Imperial Metals a mining company that wants to put an open copper mine on our sacred mountain Chitaapi or Catface. We have worked with several other nations who’s lands Imperial Metals is impacting and will continue this struggle until they are gone.