BANDON Ore. (KPTV) – A juvenile gray whale washed ashore at Tish-A-Tang Beach in southern Oregon this week after being attacked by orcas.

According to a statement by the Coquille Tribe, the tribe will handle the removal of the whale.

Jim Rice, the Marine Mammal Stranding Coordinator with Oregon State University, came to the scene to help find out what led the 18-foot whale to wash-up near Face Rock on Monday, May 6.

The next afternoon, the Oregon Parks and Recreation department reached out to the Coquille Tribe and several tribal staff members took over responsibility of the mammal’s remains during a ceremony on the beach.

Gray whale deaths have cultural significance to the Coquille people.

“We are going to do what our people have done for thousands of years,” said MJ Parrish, one of the tribal members who helped in the retrieval of the whale. “We are going to celebrate this blessing we have received. We are going to respect this great gift and utilize everything we can.”

“We will make certain not to waste its sacrifice,” Chair Meade said, adding that in Coquille Tribal culture an act of this sort is seen as a gift from the creator. “To our knowledge, this is also the first time in generations that our tribe has been able to experience this kind of ceremony. So, this is a truly wonderful gift. And not only for the whale blubber and the bones that we will be able to use. As we prepare to celebrate 35 years since being officially restored as a federally recognized tribe, it is so important that we are able to take this opportunity for the cultural education of tribal members and especially for our youth.”

This area of the southern Oregon coast is of ancestral importance to the tribe.

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The opponents and locations for the Oregon women’s basketball team’s upcoming 2024-25 schedule were revealed by the Big Ten Conference Tuesday.

In the Ducks’ first season as a Big Ten school they will host Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Purdue, Rutgers, UCLA, USC, Wisconsin and Washington at Matthew Knight Arena.

Each team will play an 18-game conference schedule, playing one opponent home and away with 16 single-game opponents. Oregon plays Washington both at home and on the road.

The teams Oregon will play on the road are Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State and Penn State.

Dates and times have yet to be announced.

Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com and you can follow him on X @AlecDietz.

A principal rallying cry from students protesting Israel’s invasion of Gaza, in Oregon and other campuses around the country, is for university administrators and trustees to sell off any investments they have in companies profiting from the war, or more broadly, from companies invested in Israel’s economy.

Such “divestment” demands have become common since the movement to divest from South Africa and its apartheid regime took off in the mid 1980s. Today it’s a regular tactic of climate and social justice activists, unions and other groups looking to pressure businesses, governments or other institutions to pursue specific policy changes, from climate change and labor conditions to fossil fuels and tobacco advertising.