Homecoming
“The Lummi Nation will welcome home Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut — their orca relative also known as Tokitae — in traditional ceremonies to honor her life and leadership,” read the brief press release that landed in my inbox on Wednesday, squeezing the breath out of my body. I’ve been following Tokiate’s story for years. Captured off Whidbey Island in Washington’s Puget Sound as a young orca in 1970, she lived in the same 80-foot by 35-foot concrete pool at the Miami Seaquarium for more than half a century, forced to turn daily tricks for an enraptured audience. She was the last remaining survivor of the 50 or so southern resident killer whales captured around the time from the Salish Sea and shipped around the world to serve the entertainment industry. Animal advocacy groups and the Lummi Nation had been pushing for Tokiate’s release for decades, but the movement to free her gathered critical mass in recent years after the National Marine Fisheries Service extended Endangered Species Act protection to the captive orca in 2015. In 2018, the Lummi Nation undertook a 27-day, cross-country Tokitae Totem Pole Journey to Florida demanding she be returned to her family. In March, I was delighted to learn that the Miami Seaquarium had agreed to let Tokiate go home. But 50-plus years of living in the small, often unsanitary enclosure had taken its toll on a being meant to swim in the open ocean. On August 18, even as plans were being put in place to fly her to a sea pen in the Puget Sound, within calling distance of her family pod that includes a 95-year-old orca believed to be her mother, Tokitae died unexpectedly of a renal condition. As she was drawing her last breaths in Florida, all three clans of southern resident killer whales met up in the Sound in a rare “superpod” gathering. Tomorrow, Lummi Nation members will hold a private, traditional water ceremony and spread Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s ashes at a sacred spot in the Salish Sea. It’s not the homecoming those who worked so hard for her release envisioned. But there is perhaps some small consolation in knowing that Tokiate’s life helped raise awareness about the plight of captive cetaceans and of the southern resident orcas, who face myriad threats, including plummeting salmon populations, pollution, and ship traffic. She brought together a community of allies — the Lummi people, researchers, activists, and supporters around the world — who will continue the critical work of restoring our relationship with our other-than-human relatives.
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