By Emi Okikawa, Digital Communications Fellow

From The Sierra Club, Washington State Chapter Journal – “The Crest” Volume 38, Issue 1

The Story of Tokitae

Three thousand miles away from Seattle,
a lone Southern Resident orca swims in a tank. To visitors at Miami Seaquarium
her name is “Lolita,” but to the Lummi Nation she is Tokitae. It’s a Chinook
name, given to her the day she was kidnapped from our waters.

At 51 years old, Tokitae has spent the majority of her life–47 years– in
captivity, confined to a tiny swimming pool with no other orca for company. She
is the age of an elder matriarch and should be the mother of her own family. But
instead, she is all alone.

Tokitae was taken from her family in the infamous Penn Cove capture of 1970.
In the brutal attack, a group of men used boats, planes, and explosives to
corral frightened and panicked orca families into nets to separate them, using
long sticks to push mothers away from their calves. In the end, the remaining
orca could only watch as their stolen babies and relatives were helicoptered
away to be distributed to various marine parks around the country. According to
the Lummi, the orca have since avoided Penn Cove because it’s still the site of
such painful memories.

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