28 November 2020 | New Scientist | 41>shares with two Pacific white-sided dolphins.
When the Miami Seaquarium wasn’t closed
to the public by the coronavirus pandemic,
she performed to visitors twice daily.
“You can hardly call it a life,” says Ingrid
Visser at the Orca Research Trust in New
Zealand, who has spent 25 years studying
orca behaviour in the wild and campaigning
for an end to their captivity. In 2016, she was
an expert witness in PETA’s unsuccessful
lawsuit against the Miami Seaquarium under
the US Animal Welfare Act. In her report,
Visser described Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s tank as
“grossly inadequate” and noted that the orca
displayed signs of a compromised immune
system, extreme stress and deprivation.
For the Lummi, who draw no distinction
between what they call their “blackfish” and
human kin, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s captivity
is nothing short of imprisonment. “We are
one and the same,” says Morris. “We call
ourselves a pod.” Nevertheless, she also
recognises that these ancestral spiritual ties
aren’t enough to secure Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s
freedom. “You have to walk in the white
world,” says Morris. Before returning
to the Lummi Reservation in 2007, she
worked for more than 22 years in corporate
banking, and then as a White House staffer
under Bill Clinton. It is this experience,
she believes, that led her ancestors to task
her with the “sacred obligation” of bringing
Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut home.
To that end, Morris and Kinley have
enlisted help from the Earth Law Center,
a Colorado-based non-profit organisation
that aims to transform laws worldwide
so that they protect, restore and stabilise
The captive orca
performs twice daily
under the name Lolita