"In continuing to offer prayer for the repatriation of southern resident orca Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut from the Miami Seaquarium to her home waters of the Salish Sea, Lummi Tribal citizens and the Bellingham, Washington community gathered Sunday, March 20, at the sacred site of Cherry Point — named Xwe’chi’eXen in the Lummi language."
https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/tribal-citizens-offer-prayer-cedar-for-the-return-of-orca
Wow, this is really close to the time that some Vietnamese villages celebrate their whale festivals too!
My maternal grandmother's village in Vietnam had responsibilities for mourning any deceased whales and annual celebrations for good fishing and support on the water. Based on what I've been able to read online however, it often gets portrayed more like a transactional or even extractive relationship where people hope for good fishing and safety etc. and whales are moreso harbingers of wealth and luck. Yet when someone finds a dead whale, there's a responsibility to take it ashore for proper burial and someone from the village would be tasked to mourn it like a direct relative for 100 days. In some villages, the bones even become enshrined and kept at a small temple.
But it's so good to see other nations like the Lummi with care for the return when one is taken away being done, especially for a pod like the Southern Residents which are sort of famous in the scientific community for their own cultural.
The Southern Resident population has led the way with sort of fashion/ways to play with their food (known for wearing a piece of salmon or other meat on the head in the 1980s), and their dialect of language plus matriarchal leadership roles are comparatively very well studied too.
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