When stories are teachings; orca touches hearts years after her capture

The questions were poignant and plentiful. Who was her mother? Did she have siblings? How and why did she live so long in captivity?

On a recent visit to Alderwood and Happy Valley elementary schools, Lummi author Tah-Mahs Ellie Kinley read aloud from her newly published book “Our Hearts Beat as One,” about a Salish Sea Southern Resident orca held in captivity since the early 1970s. The orca’s Lummi name is Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut (ska li chuk tuh not). In captivity, she was known as both Tokitae (Toki) and as Lolita (her performer name.)

After the school readings, Kinley, along with co-author Julie Trimingham, answered student questions.

The answer to how Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut was able to live so long in a Miami tank ultimately became the purpose of the book. To tell this orca’s story is to honor her life; and to share the tragedy of her captivity and long life in a seaquarium continues to give her purpose.

Every person who reads the book and learns her story adds to healing and wholeness in the world. Though she died in August 2023 just before her physical move back home to the Salish Sea, through this story she is able to be returned and reunited in our hearts and minds.

Listen and watch Kinley read the book in a video produced by Children of the Setting Sun Productions.

In addition to the author reading, Happy Valley students also had an opportunity to create artwork alongside the book’s Lummi illustrator Sienum Jason LaClair who serves as an Allied Arts resident artist at the school. At Northern Heights Elementary School, fifth graders in Taraleen Wildly’s classroom also created art pieces after reading and discussing the book. See photo slides above.

On March 11, Happy Valley second graders performed an original song composed by music teacher Katherine Tully to celebrate the release of the book and the Children of the Setting Sun video. See lyrics below.

The book includes background notes about orcas in the Salish Sea and a Lummi language translation (Xwlemi’ Chosen) is across every page accompanied by a pronunciation guide. In the back of the book are also some helpful questions and activities to use at home or in classroom settings when thinking about the many teachings that come from Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s story. These questions help us connect the tragic story to lessons in resilience, gratitude and healing in our present world.

Reflections with author Tah-Mahs Ellie Kinley

Kinley tells us that writing the book and deciding what parts of the story to tell was akin to pruning an overgrown apple tree.

“When you sit down to write a book it’s like having an apple tree that nobody pruned in 20 years,” she said. “Your ideas go every which direction and not only your ideas but what you think needs to be in the book, especially when telling an actual story.”

“Because it had truth,” she continued, “there was so much to put it. We had to put it all down and then we had to start pruning.”

One important part of the book to leave in, according to Kinley, was making the stark connection between Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut being stolen from her home and her pod in the Salish Sea and the not-so-long-ago history of Native children being taken away and sent to Indian boarding schools.

“Her life was so much like the life of people who got sent to boarding school, but it’s a children’s book,” she relayed. “How do you do that without writing three pages about it?” she pondered as she started writing.

After one of her readings with elementary school children, Kinley shared that she was amazed that a student stood up and voiced the connection, having heard the important line in the telling of the story.

“That was my amazement that they got it, without three pages written about it – the student was able to voice that it was the same thing we went through with boarding schools” she shared.

“I just loved that moment. It worked.”

Kinley was part of a dedicated group trying to bring Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut home. The film Resident Orca, which was part of the 2025 Treaty Day Film Festival at the Pickford Cinema, tells the story of the efforts to secure her freedom and her return home. The film is not yet available to stream in the United States.

Orca matriarch Ocean Sun is Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s mother, and according to Kinley, an amazing thing occurred after Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut remains came home: Ocean Sun and her pod returned to Penn Cove in fall 2024 for the first time since the capture of her daughter.

“Now Ocean Sun has taken her family back there,” Kinley shared. “That happened in November. They hadn’t returned there since 1970. It just proves that she knew. There’s a healing involved and Ocean Sun got them all in there to tell the story.”

If you would like to learn more about Kinley’s life as a fisher on the Salish Sea, the film Salmon People, Preserving a Way of Life, produced by Children of the Setting Sun Productions, is available now for viewing.

Hy’shqe (thank you in Lummi language) to authors Kinley and Trimingham, illustrator Sienum Jason LaClair and translator Na-tak-ul-tan Tino Kurtz for bringing Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s story to us.

Song lyrics

qwe’lhol’mechen “Our Relations Below the Waves”

Composed by Happy Valley music teacher Katherine Tully

Lyrics based on pledge written by Tah Mahs Ellie Kinley and Julie Trimingham

To you I pledge, to you I pledge

CHORUS 

qwe’lhol’mechen, qwe’lhol’mechen

sisters and brothers, family

to you I pledge, to you I pledge  (repeat chorus)

The Earth is alive and I am part of the living Earth

To you I pledge, to you I pledge

CHORUS 

The ones who fly,

The ones who crawl

The ones who swim

The ones who run are my relations

To you I pledge, to you I pledge

CHORUS 

The lakes, lands, rivers, and seas

Like parents, they love and sustain me

Kindness, love, and respect

Kindness, love, and respect

qwe’lhol’mechen, qwe’lhol’mechen, qwe’lhol’mechen