By Nora O’Malley Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Like a giant cedar tree cut down, the passing of Ditidaht elder Michael Thompson (Kwiibaalaah) this summer left a mark on the Nuu-chah-nulth landscape, leaving the younger generation with less. Thompson was the lone fluent speaker of the diitiidʔaaʔtx̣ (Ditidaht) dialect. He was born in the village of Waaya, B.C. on September 13, 1932, and passed away on July 13, 2026, in Ditidaht’s main village of Balaats’adt on Nitinaht Lake. “With the last speaker going means that our children and grandchildren won’t hear actual fluent speech,” said Dr. Bernice Touchie. “Language changes all the time, but there will be drastic changes without hearing the original, everyday language; the pronunciation, the accent, the body language, all of that was part of communicating at one…
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