“We continue to use our Secwepemc values to guide our response to the COVID outbreak in our community,” notes Chief Helen Henderson. “The Canim Lake Emergency Operations Team has managed to keep our community safe, while dealing with their own sense of loss and stress through the last weeks.”
The release also states that the community has met provincial health office criteria to end the lock down, and its Emergency Operations Team will continue to follow provincial health orders. Canim Lake Band members may also be visiting nearby communities for appointments and to buy groceries and supplies.
“It is our strong family values that allowed COVID to take hold in our community. But it is also our strong community values that allowed us to pull together and do what was needed for the good of the community as a whole,” says Henderson. “In the larger picture, we have learned many lessons about dealing with a pandemic that can be used to benefit other communities.”
Dr. Shannon McDonald, the acting chief medical officer of the First Nations Health Authority, said 600 infections in B.C. First Nations are still active, and 32 people from Indigenous communities have died of coronavirus.
British Columbia has allocated 25,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine to First Nations for distribution by the end of February and 19 have received doses so far
Like all young music groups, December is usually concert time for Kilbride and Lakeside Band, but in this year of Covid-19 it wasn t to be.
Having had no weekly rehearsals for most of the year, the young musicians decided to save their energy for a different plan. Each young musician receives a weekly lesson at Manor Kilbride Music School, and since the students returned to their lessons in September, they have been practising diligently, improving their skills from week to week.
They each decided to perfect one piece of music and record it, using the equipment available at their musical home base, The Millennium Centre, Old Court, Manor Kilbride. Musical director Colm O Hara then made a compilation CD of all the tracks, and finished it just in time for a planned Christmas event.
The White House
On Wednesday, December 23, 2020, the President signed into law:
H.R. 3465, the “Fallen Journalist Memorial Act, which authorizes the Fallen Journalist Memorial Foundation to establish a commemorative work in the District of Columbia to commemorate America’s commitment to a free press by honoring journalist who sacrificed their lives to that cause;
H.R. 4761, the “DHS Opioid Detection Resilience Act of 2019,” which requires U.S. Customs and Border Protection to implement a strategy to ensure that chemical screening devices at ports of entry are able to identify illicit narcotics at specified purity levels;
S. 199, the “Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Reservation Restoration Act,” which directs the Secretary of Agriculture to transfer to the Secretary of the Interior certain Federal land to be held in trust for the benefit of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe;