On this day in 2008 the community celebrated the first harvest of a bowhead whale since the 1928 whaling ban. After >20 years of advocacy by Inuit leaders including elder Naalak Nappaaluk (ᓈᓚᒃ ᓇᑉᐹᓗᒃ), the community was able to harvest a whale. Today we celebrate this important milestone for their community but also the broader work of Inuit elder Naalak Nappaaluk, who was a lifelong advocate for Inuit rights and proponent of the Inuktitut language. Nappaaluk pushed hard for the restart of the hunt, which Inuit people believe is necessary for their populations to remain healthy and abundant. We also honor his wife Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk, a respected elder, educator, and author of several books in Inuktitut. “It was something for Nunavimmiut,” says Qiallak Nappaaluk (Naalak's daughter), who was also on the beach when the whale hunters returned. “We ate it, and it seemed like we’d eaten it before, like we were used to it. I think it was in our blood. We were so excited. I remember it was a really good taste.”

From Black Women Radicals Database: "In one of the largest demonstrations staged in South African history, twenty thousand women of all races marched to the Union Buildings on August 9, 1956 in protest against the compulsory carrying of passes by African (Black) women. This march was significant for its multi-racial mobilization and the direct challenge it presented to the apartheid government, indicating that women would neither be silenced nor intimidated by unjust laws. n urban areas, the women’s anti-passbook campaigns were primarily organized by the African National Congress (ANC) Women’s League and the non-racial Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW or FSAW). FEDSAW was founded in 1954. It was the first attempt to establish a broad-based women’s organization, without any particular political affiliation, though it was supported by some political organizations, clandestine and otherwise: the Communist party (prohibited in 1950) and the ANC (banned in 1960). 146 delegates, representing 230,000 women from all parts of South Africa, attended the founding conference of FEDSAW and pledged their support for the general campaigns of the Congress Alliance. It took 12 years for the apartheid government to pass the bill that it had announced as early as 1950. The government had been delayed for three years because of women’s resistance, and the implementation of the law was extended with difficulty over the course of a decade. It was only on February 1, 1963 that the government was able to proclaim that all South African women had to own the pass that they had fought so long against. This struggle brought South African women, black women in particular, into the political arena.[8] While the protests did not necessarily result in the gains the women had anticipated, they proved a vital, if hard, political apprenticeship. South African women continued in varying degrees to participate in liberation movements to free their country from apartheid, but the anti-passbook campaign is particularly significant for uniting women across races and spaces to take collective action for their rights." We encourage you to read more about this struggle and many others on blackwomenradicals.com

Lord De La Warr had just arrived in Jamestown after the colony was nearly abandoned in June. He adopted a much harsher and more war like attitude towards relations with the local Indigenous peoples (who had kept the colony from completely starving the previous two winters). He demanded the return of all captives held by the Powhatan in early July or face war. The colonists also held Powhatan captives, and some sources say the Powhatan response was for the colonists to stay in their fort or leave Virginia. After receiving no further response, De La Warr attacked the nearby Paspahegh village killing 65-75 peoples and taking the wife of Powhatan leader Wahunsunacawh and their children captive. De La Warr ordered the children thrown overboard and shot and later executed the wife of Wahunsunacawh as well. These actions are considered a major change in the approach of the colonists and resulted in the Paspahegh leaving the area permanently. It is presumed they joined with other Powhatan peoples and there is no further record of them as a distinct peoples after this brutal attack. Resistance to the colonists continued and in some cases this attack is considered the beginning of the first Anglo-Powhatan War. The Paspahegh are remembered with a historical marker which states "the Paspahegh consistently resisted the English settlement".

Francisco de Chicora was a Native man (possibly Catawba) who was kidnapped in 1521 near Winyah Bay (in what would become South Carolina) by Spanish explorer Francisco Gordillo and taken to Hispaniola. He learned Spanish and 'worked' for Lucas Vasquez de Ayllón, a colonial official who wanted to start a colony near where Chicora was kidnapped. Ayllon brought him to Spain where he used him to help convince the Crown to support his colonial idea. Upon approval, Ayllon with de Chicora, about 600 settlers, and an unknown number of enslaved Africans travelled back to Winyah Bay in 1526 to establish a colony. This date, August 9th is when they made landfall, crashing one of their boats on the sandbar and sinking it. Chicora escaped and presumably returned to his people. The colony failed with only ~150 successfully making it back to Hispaniola.