TINA MCDUFFIE: Wild sockeye salmon-- a mainstay for the Lummi tribe in Washington State.

ELLIE "TAH-MAS" KINLEY: We used to fish, actually, all spring, summer and fall.

The salmon were plentiful enough that they sustained us.

MCDUFFIE: But now the wild salmon are dying out.

TAH-MAS: These fish farms give our wild salmon lice, viruses... WAYNE "WENECWTSIN" CHRISTIAN: Now they're in trouble.

We need to help them survive.

MCDUFFIE: "Salmon People: Preserving a Way of Life," on "Local, U.S.A." ♪ ♪ MAN: "Scha'nexw Elhtal'nexw Yehomest e'tse en Sche'lang'en."

(muffled water sloshing) (drumming, Antone George harmonizing) (drumming, harmonizing continues) (drumming, harmonizing continues) (drumming, Antone and Cheryl George harmonizing) (loud drumming) (drumming, harmonizing ends) (drumming fades in) (drumming continues) ELLIE (voiceover): This is a love story.

It's a love of salmon.

It's a love of our people.

And it's a love of Chexanexwh Larry Kinley.

(drumming fades) LARRY "CHEXANEXWH" KINLEY: As long as we want to be Indian people, and we want to honor our custom and traditions and our "sche'lang'en," it'll be a running battle all the time.

As long as we want to be who we want to be, because we have a different view of the world, that's the challenge.

And it's not that we're right and other folks are wrong.

It's that we're trying to preserve a way of life.

And fishing is vital to that.

(birds chirping) CHRISTIAN: Really, it's about water.

Our people tell us that we are actually born into water.

We're water beings before we became human beings.

We spend nine months of our life in water.

The salmon and our people have had a reciprocal relationship since time immemorial.

They gave their life so we could live.

That cycle begins with them coming back in the spawning beds, which are their beds where they're born again and so that little egg is then planted back into the earth.

Earth and the water work together to protect it.

And then they start to grow.

As they come alive, they begin that journey.

As they begin their journey down river, down towards the ocean, then they have to go through a whole bunch of manmade obstacles.

You know, they didn't at one time, but now they do.

Then you have all the industrial pollution, agricultural pollution that they encounter.

(car horn honking) That in itself, you wonder, how do they even survive all that?

But they're adaptable.

They've been doing this for thousands of years.

They adapt, they survive, they go into the ocean and they grow and then part of them that starts to change.

They were in freshwater, now they're saltwater.

They've completely adapted to saltwater.

You know and then they make that journey back.

(Ethel Billy singing in Lummi language) And as they come back is when they start encountering all the manmade processes, the same things that they encountered when they were little smolts when they went down, now they encounter as adults.

And so they fight their way back up, because it's for their survival for the next generation.

They fight to live so they can give life.

Thousands of them at one time.

And they just... ...start the cycle over again.

(drumming, singing in Lummi language continues) And as they leave this human world, they then, as carcasses become food for the animals, for the land, for the birds, for the four-legged, for the plants.

We have to have that relationship with the salmon.

We can't ignore the fact that they've helped us survive for thousands of years.

Now they're in trouble.

We need to help them survive for thousands of years.

Not just us as Indigenous people, but all people, because it's all people that are benefiting from the salmon.

OREN "JOAGQUISHO" LYONS: Everything is so tied together, you can't really unravel it, how we're intertwined with life.

You know, everything.

You know, if you pull the string here, something over here that could happen.

(birds chirping) So you have to know what happened, you have to know what's going on, and you have to have foresight.

(dog barking) (object rattling) (shuffling, distant indistinct chatter) (thud) STEVE "TLA'KALIN CES'XEN" SOLOMON: Coming in right there.

- Should I put this wood there?

- Sorry, oh that's a good one.

(blowtorch hissing) HERMAN LAWRENCE JR.: Whoa!

I can see the fire!

- A little fire, huh?

- Yeah!

- Don't need a big one.

- Yeah.

(fire crackling, popping) SOLOMON: My grandparents are Felix and Dora Solomon.

Dora Williams from Upper Skagit and Soft Valley area.

He would give us a lot of information, more than just to table set.

He told us and showed us how to listen.

How to listen to the water.

(water trickling) (wind blowing) How to listen to the wind when it brings the songs that come through.

And if you hear them... ...sing it or chant it with them, with what you hear.

They always had a chant and a song for everything.

(water sloshing) (seagulls squawking) ELLIE: Grandpa Felix and Great-Grandma Dora, their first kids were the twins, Jim and Mike.

And Mike was my grandpa.

There was always salmon on the table.

If you weren't eating barbecued salmon, there was canned salmon, and there was always dried salmon.

LARRY: You need to know who you are and where you come from.

Them guides of culture are really guides from Lummi's perspective, we take a long term horizon, look at the world and we also are constantly looking back as we look forward.

We always say it here that to know where we're going, we have to know where we're at, to know where we're at, we have to know where we come from, before we can move on to the future.

That constantly comes within our conversations, within our community, within our culture, within our doings, and a constant reminder that we're tribal people and that we're people of family.

Ha!

LARRY: I come from the James family and the Kinley family.

On the James side, my grandparents were Norb and Clara James.

Grandpa James was a purse seiner.

Their children all were fishermen and fisherwomen, because a lot of our women fished on the river.

My mother fished on the river and my aunts and lots of women from Lummi fished on the Nooksack River.

While our fathers fished out in the ocean, clear up into Alaska.

Grandpa Kinley's Indian name was also Chexanexwh.

He fished with sails and fished not only in what is now the United States, but also up into British Columbia, up as far as the Skeena River up by Prince Rupert.

So I come from a long line of fishermen.

Both sides of the family.

Our children are fishermen, but also my two oldest daughters, they grew up fishing, even though they're in other occupations, they grew up on our boats and fished with us, too.

And so there's a rich history in our family of the women fishing also, not just the men.

(babbling) LUCAS KINLEY: Growing up on the boat, always fishing around Puget Sound.

We always looked forward to it actually.

Hanging out down at Squalicum Harbor, all summer long, running around on the boat, getting yelled at.

(laughs) Getting into trouble, getting in their way all time, we're doing something while they're trying to work.

But then as we got older, being more involved with everything and kind of just it's just something you got used to doing.

You didn't really expect to do anything else.

(Antone George harmonizing, drum beating) (harmonizing, drumming continues) ELLIE: The home of the Lhaq'temish, from where I sit and I look, is as far as I can see.

(Antone and Cheryl George harmonizing, drumming) It's all those islands.

And if I was to turn around and look the other way, it's to the top of Mount Baker.

That's the home of the Lhaq'temish, the Lummi people.

I started fishing for my father when I was 23.

When I started fishing, we used to fish, actually, all spring, summer and fall.

The salmon were plentiful enough that they sustained us, and now they don't.

They're almost gone.

What happened to our salmon?

(car beeping) LUCAS: As soon as you notice, it's starting to warm up, things start going into motion to prepare for the coming season.

From getting the boat ready, to working on gear, to getting everything loaded up and then just being prepared for the season, ready for the salmon to come home... ...whether we fished or not.

(laughs) ELLIE: Sockeye is the major fish that our culture depends on.

It's the fish we put away for the winter.

Of course, nowadays, it's the fish that we depend on for making a living.

Sockeye is a fun thing to chase around.

I'm hopeful.

Something I've picked up from my dad, you know, he's got to be optimistic about it.

ELLIE (voiceover): They are saying this is going to be the one year in four that we're going to be allowed to harvest, and hopefully we will have the opportunity to spend some time out on the water.

(trumpet music playing) I've had three skippers.

My dad was my first skipper.

And Larry was my second skipper.

And, currently, my son Lucas is running our boat.

Looks clear.

ELLIE (voiceover): So in order for us to fish in any one season, several things have to happen.

The Pacific Salmon Commission, the Fraser River Panel, DFO Canada, these agreements all have to be met.

A certain number of fish have to be up the river.

WOMAN (over phone): For the two purse sein fisheries, again, in area 20 has been doing fairly well and it's been staying above 2017, and uh... ELLIE: The U.S. has a treaty with Canada and we, we get something like 40% of the sockeye that goes up the Fraser.

Their job, of course, is to make sure every year we have escapement because you've got to be able to have a run again.

But it's not always science.

The politics get into it.

LUCAS: I don't know if we're going to propose an opener or not.

I give it a fifty-fifty chance, right now.

WOMAN (over phone): ...above Big Bar is 176,000.

MAN (over phone): We'll evaluate the information over the next week or two.

And if run sizes go down, then allowable harvest rates would likely go down as well.

Some of them.

LUCAS: So, I don't think we're proposing a seine fishery.

WOMAN (over phone): Yeah.

We'll just get ready for our crab opening next week and see what Tuesday's meeting brings us and what the test data shows over the weekend.

(woman harmonizing, drumming) (harmonizing, drumming continues) ELLIE: When Larry was diagnosed with cancer, Kyle must have been about 20, and I believe Luke was 24.

Larry had already been preparing Luke.

LUCAS: 3-5-0!

ELLIE (voiceover): And so Luke had to step in and run the boat because it is, it's our family business.

It's our way of life.

I think Luke, being 24 and having to step into his dad's footsteps, I believe that was almost easier for Luke than Kyle, because Kyle was only 20.

In a way, he was shorted in time because he didn't get those five extra years that Luke got with his dad.

KYLE "SQW'QUALT'EN" KINLEY: One thing important to me is my name.

The name Sqw'Qualt'ten comes from Lummi island.

It comes from the black paint natives.

You know, people talked here and there about the stuff my dad has done, but I never saw any of this until I was at least 15, 16 years old.

And even then, I didn't take it seriously, because it was my dad.

There was things that delayed the process of me grasping how big my dad's impact was.

At 21, the elders sat him down and told him he was gonna join the politics and next thing he knew, he was there.

He was my age.

It's intimidating almost, you know?

I remember when I was younger, man, I heard that without practicing your culture, you're just a white man.

And it kind of felt like I was a white man for a while.

It felt like I didn't have the right to say I was a Native.

I guess I'm just too young.

I haven't really done any of the work.

(indistinct chatter) ELLIE: Larry was always a couple steps ahead of everyone.

When Larry had this idea to build a reef net, there wasn't a tribal reef net on Lummi Island.

"Sxwo'le" is Lhaq'temish for reef net.

To know who we are and where we come from, we have to know about "Sxwo'le," because that's how we started.

We started with reef nets.

LARRY: The reef net was really tied to families and heads of families.

It was a great way to do fishing, that was actually started here at Lummi.

KYLE: That's why I like the reef net.

There's some sort of feeling I get from it that is important.

Like I have direction that I could follow.

My dad saw it before I did.

He got us into the reef nets before I even knew what reef nets were.

But he knew.

He knew what they were to us.

(indistinct) LARRY: My expectation is over time that we're going to see the reef net families going back to reclaim some of their sites.

You know, which is a great thing, you know?

And that means then they're learning who they are and where they come from.

ELLIE: Reef net sites never go away.

They were passed down from father to son, and son to son, and they're still there.

Returning to the reef nets is coming full circle.

It's returning to who we were and where we came from.

And that is important because the children nowadays don't know where we came from.

We came from all those sites and from those sites there were villages.

And then we became the Lummi Nation.

(Antone and Cheryl George harmonizing, drumming) LARRY: I still remember a day, one time, running out from Eagle Point, I swore I could hear drums.

How do you explain that feeling?

This is where we're supposed to be.

Only other way I can describe it was is, "we're home."

(Antone and Cheryl George harmonizing, drumming) LUCAS: I never understood why this was a high water set.

Because why would the fish come out of Legoe Bay at high water just to buck the tide.

- Right?

- It's starting to ebb.

LUCAS: But it's how it is.

I'm not a fish, I guess, I don't know why I'm asking.

ELLIE: Bloop, bloop.

(laughter) Bloop, bloop, bloop!

(voiceover): It has always been super important to me that when we're out fishing, that I have my whole family there.

I mean, it was perfect when I had my husband.

And then I had my two boys.

- Hydraulics up now, Ell.

- I did.

(indistinct chatter) Hi, broken lady.

Hi, broken lady.

(indistinct phone chatter) (whirring) You can just drop it.

- That one?

- Sure.

Coming over.

(whirring) WOMAN: You never latched that eye while it hung out.

(rattling) (salmon flopping) (rattling, flopping) (indistinct chatter) (plane overhead) Now that is content as content can be.

This stock, and 12 years ago, there were 60 million fish coming through here and most of them come through here, and you would just see them, just backs out of the water going with the tide.

Thousands and thousands of them.

Something happened.

Something really happened to them.

The Adams River stock.

The fishing life that it is now, I've been fishing with my dad for 30 years and it's depleting at a rapid rate.

I mean, I love to do it because it's in my blood.

I love to do it because this is, this is where we come from.

This is our life.

This is our home.

But you know, I'm hoping it's around for him for 30 years because he knows what it tastes like now, he knows what it feels like to be out here, and he's thankful.

It's not a lot of money.

We work hard for it.

We work hard for, you know, what little money we do get.

And then we turn around, and we, we go, and we go to the store, and it's sold for $20 a pound when we're getting a dollar a pound and, and we, we work for it.

It's our, it's our way of life.

It's our way of life.

It's always been our way of life; crabbing, fishing, clam digging, geoducking.

You know, everything.

Halibuttin'-- it's our way of life.

There are some days that are better than others.

Like yesterday, you know, 150 fish to today we have 50.

We'll be lucky enough to get 75 by the time we go home.

(rattling) AMY: Not enough juice in the battery.

When in doubt, use the rope.

(engine starts) STEVE (voiceover): Real history begins with Native history.

(man vocalizing) In 1905, my grandfather went to his reef net sites.

Started out at San Juan Island, and there's a trap there.

He, he moves on into his other location he had inside Lummi Island, and there's a fish trap there.

And he goes up to Cherry Point and there's a fish trap there.

He goes up to Point Roberts and a fish trap's there, and he goes to the owner, one that run that trap, offered my grandfather a job.

But first my grandfather says, "what am I going to do?

I have my family and my people to feed."

He didn't like that job.

The job entailed throwing over all the fish they couldn't use, in the cover of darkness.

And all of those scowloads and scowloads of fish that he had to throw into a Georgia Strait... With a salmon pew.

One at a time.

All they took was the belly part of the salmon.

It hurt him.

He says, "You people can't continue to take and take and take like this."

He says, "You're going to kill it in time.'

In 1905, there was so much fish in all these creeks that big business thought they were an inexhaustible resource.

When I was a young guy, I eventually started to get involved with our community.

I'd listen to leadership and our elders talk about that we have treaty rights.

They are the law of the land.

The significance of this treaty was, is we went through and we, said within the treaty, we reserved certain things that we wanted to protect.

If we're going to sign over all this land, we have agreements on education, on health care and things like that.

And that's what our ancestors negotiated for the allowance of settlement out here.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ STEVE: The fish wars go beyond fishing on the water.

Always, the backdrop was, "You people get to fish seven days a week.

You people."

And it really become hostile.

The sportsmen and the big businesses for rod and reel and rec fishing is focused around steelhead.

We don't play with our fish.

We respect that fish.

We pray for it.

We take it home.

We take care of it.

It's going to nourish us.

I could recall countless members being ticketed for harvesting a steelhead in the late '60s.

The state federal enforcement officials, they had this imaginary line, and they patrolled that imaginary line on the water.

GAME WARDEN: It's illegal gear and it's going to be taken.

MAISELLE BRIDGES: You'll have to take us with it, 'cause we're not lettin' go, we're fishing under the Medicine Creak Treaty.

- You are not!

- And we're enrolled members.

BRIDGES: We are too.

WARDEN: You're poaching is what you're doing.

BRIDGES: We're not either!

You're the one that's poaching.

You're the one that's been poaching on our land.

You're not taking this net, it's the last net we got.

STEVE: Our nation just said, keep fishing, keep fishing.

The Fish Wars is a culmination of all the Pacific Coast tribes.

We give up all the vast land, all the treaty nations, give up all of this land in exchange for reserved rights.

We reserve the right to fish our usual and accustomed grounds and stations.

These grant of rights is not a grant of rights from you to me, it's a grant of rights from us to you.

♪ Coming down on my head ♪ April of '74, the ruling came down.

The attorney that we had, Mason Morisset, he came down and sat with the fishermen right on the beach.

He said, "You guys got half.

You guys got half the resource now."

And I says, "Half?"

Everybody's hollering around, "Yeah, yeah!

We got half!"

And I, I looked at it and I said, "Hm."

A judge has all the evidence in front of him, and all that evidence is so skewed and heavy to the, the treaty tribes that he owes the whole resource to those treaty tribes.

But in actuality, he had to make a political cut, so he cut the baby in half.

Judge Boldt ruled in '74, and folks said that happened in '74.

No.

Our people, clear back from the time we did treaty, were arguing that we have an agreement here on the fishing rights issue.

It only came out in 1974.

And even then, some of our people argue that we lost half of our fishing right.

We didn't gain 50%; we lost 50%.

Because at the time of the treaty, we were the only ones fishing, for both commercial and subsistence.

LYONS: And I tell everybody, all our Indian nations, that you're never gonna stop fighting for your land.

That's never gonna end.

So don't be looking for relief.

You're gonna pass this fight on to your children.

ELLIE: So our fishing is unique because we are fishing on a Fraser River stock, and that river is up in Canada.

MAN (on speakerphone): This is the recorded message service of the Pacific Salmon Commission.

Press one for test fishing results.

(phone button beeps) Test fishing catches for Sunday, July 25, are as follows: Area 20 gill net at 249 sockeye with two boats fishing.

STEVE: When the salmon come, they split off, and they either gonna come down the island or gonna go inside route.

It's only three days from area 12 at Round Island to the mouth of the Fraser right down here.

And those fish aren't really ready to go up yet.

And they'll hang out in here in this deep water.

That border's not ours.

These fish know no borders.

And we don't get no opportunity because of that imaginary line.

But what we found out is if it blows a good, hard west wind, they'll blow them off of this here hole, and they'll push them right into the beach here, right in front of Point Roberts.

(man exclaims) ELLIE (voiceover): We have a treaty with Canada that allows us a fair percentage of that fish.

We also have a treaty with the U.S. government.

And that treaty allows us to fish in our usual and accustomed areas.

You got to grab that donut at the same time.

LUCAS: Oh, slow down.

Hold onto that ring, Christian.

ELLIE: Hold it, hold it, hold the ring.

LUCAS: Real slow, whoa, whoa, whoa... - (metal clunks) - ...whoa, whoa, whoa!

ELLIE (voiceover): You don't have to fish too much to realize that it's more than just your time on the water.

In order for you to have time on the water, it requires you to do other work.

And in order for me to know that my grandchildren are gonna be able to have time on the water, it required me to step off the deck of the boat to protect those things that we hold most valuable in our heart.

I got to participate in a protest up at the border when the Canadians tried to shut us down early.

And we all went out with our boats, and I went out with my dad.

REPORTER: The Department of Commerce closed the sockeye season because they believed it would jeopardize the Pacific Salmon Treaty between the U.S. and Canada.

That decision superseded the older Lummi Treaty.

This is the only thing that I do to make a living is fishing.

And it's just like the federal government's taking the money right out of my pocket.

REPORTER: So, close to 100 tribal boats traveled to Point Roberts in support of those who chose to protest the closure by dropping their nets.

We have to open up the fishery again!

We all have to go fishing!

Sooner or later!

Otherwise you might as well burn your boat!

You might as well burn your boat!

Because it has no value anymore!

STEVE: You have to really look back at the treaty and the treaty language.

Fishing tribes didn't give up their right to harvest fish at usual and accustomed grounds and stations.

LYONS: The treaties are important.

You have treaties up and down the West Coast.

Get back to those treaties.

They're agreements.

Good morning, Mom.

What's for breakfast?

ELLIE: Salmon hash.

KYLE (voiceover): I grew up seining.

And I kind of grew up feeling like I didn't have a choice.

And I felt like it took away from, uh, the greatness that is out here and the good feelings and all that.

And it was kind of clouding me.

So I wanted to kind of step away and see what else existed now that I was, not missing out on, but wasn't seeing.

With my time not being on the seiner, I actually do miss it.

Yeah, so if the time comes again, I would love to get back on the boat and start seining again.

That's my Uncle John, John Solomon.

(dog barking) WILLIAM KINLEY: I want to see the fish they caught.

KYLE: These are good sets.

I mean, some of the really great ones, like 2012, but I mean, we would have half the net out, and they would still be bubbling.

We'd just have to keep breaking until we were full, and then we'd wait on a tender and get pumped out.

(machine ratcheting) These are good bags.

(indistinct chatter) STEVE (on speakerphone): Three days ago there was 12,000 or 13,000 test, Area 12 dropped down to 240 fish.

- Mmm.

- (on phone): In three days.

Area 13 ended up with a couple thousand.

Geez.

STEVE (on phone): So hope we don't bottom right out.

- I guess so.

- We'll know here by noon.

STEVE: A treaty right without fish is not a treaty right at all.

NEWSCASTER: Protecting the fisheries' resource has been the mandate of the State Department of Fisheries since its beginning.

State hatcheries were started in the 1890s.

Lummi, Muckleshoot, Quinault and other tribes all have enhancement programs, many begun since the Boldt Decision.

NEWSCASTER 2: For the Lummis, the return of the coho is a hard-won success.

They've struggled with the courts, the federal government, and the non-Indian fishing fleet all for a resource they believe belonged to them in the beginning.

Lummis depend on fish for a living.

Federal enhancement money is also being cut.

$20 million has already been spent here.

LARRY: We've already felt the squeeze, especially in enhancement, and we're gonna expect a lot more of it.

But the real key here is we're just gonna have to get some more fish out into the, into the waters, and that should help everybody.

NEWSCASTER 2: The tribal chairman says the strength of salmon returns depends on non-Indians and Indians working together.

STEVE (voiceover): Hatchery fish derived from wild fish.

And in 2010 we had 13 adults spawn in captivity.

2022... ...those 13 fish grew into 26,000 fish.

This place is vitally important to our people.

We're still surviving.

Everybody thinks numbers-wise we raise millions, and what they don't realize is we only get 1% back of what we release.

In all that we do, we got our people at heart, mm-hmm, in everything we do.

See all them little fish out there?

They're gonna come back here in three and four years.

See 'em?

Like raindrops.

This way.

(voiceover): He's got the traits of his uncle.

My little guy.

My attachment.

I'm gonna be dear to him and show him how we walk in this life.

We're just echoes of our past.

ELLIE: Larry's traditional name is Chexanexwh.

The way Larry carried himself, the leader that Larry was, the fisherman that Larry was, these were all things that held up that name that represented it.

And then my husband was able to pass that name down to our first-born son, Lucas.

LUCAS: There's thick fog for a mile here.

ELLIE: When Larry's cancer was detected, it was by accident.

It was found on another scan.

The surgeons went in and removed the cancer from his lungs.

And they said they got it all and he was fine.

So what we thought was a really scary time, all of a sudden they said, "No, you're good.

You're fine.

We got it all."

And then, six months later, Larry was walking up our hill, and he got winded.

And so we went into the doctor and they did another CAT scan.

And all of a sudden Larry went from the cancer was all gone to stage four lung cancer.

(exhales) When he got cancer, when we found out, it was a down year for pinks.

And then I took over the boat for chums that, that fall, and, uh... JOHN SOLOMON (on radio): I'll do one with you.

LUCAS (voiceover): That was a struggle.

You know, it was my first time running it out there, and we weren't catching nothing, or I wasn't catching nothing.

And I think I was like, uh, four days into it.

Finally, my dad decided to come out for that season.

He wasn't supposed to.

He came out anyways.

Because that point, he was kind of having a hard time.

I mean, it was really catching up to him.

But I think those, those five or six days that we fished out there, that last season, it was probably the happiest I'd seen him in probably months.

It just seemed like there was nothing wrong.

You know, everything went away.

He went back to doing what he loved.

It was fun.

(voice trembling): And we were really hoping to... ...do one more season before he passed.

But he didn't make it to that summer.

ELLIE (voiceover): You actually used to be able to make a pretty dependable living from fishing.

It's had its highs and lows over the last 20 years.

And we are in a definite lull right now.

A person almost needs an actual job to support your fishing habit, which is kind of what Larry did for years.

He was supporting his fishing habit with his job.

(chuckles) I believe one of the biggest threats to our wild salmon are the fish farms up in British Columbia.

When our baby salmon come out of the river, they have to pass by or under hundreds of fish farms.

These fish farms give our wild salmon lice, viruses, diseases... ...if our wild salmon aren't eaten as they pass through these farms.

You can trace back the sharp incline of the number of fish farms to the sharp decline of our wild salmon stocks.

These non-native farmed fish will be the end to our wild fish, if something's not done about them.

When people purchase farmed Atlantic salmon, you're purchasing salmon that's been raised in the Salish Sea, and it is harming our wild salmon stocks.

STEVE: No silvers here yet, Amy.

AMY SOLOMON: Nope.

Now that's a sign of the time.

I went from fishing eight-inch to fishing six-inch now.

Two inches smaller.

All right, push it open, son.

Can you do it?

7,000 was good last year, and we're harvesting at a rate lower than that?

Not good.

Not.

(clicks button, engine stops) Where's the fish?

They're not coming.

They're not coming.

No silver's here yet, Troy.

They'd be jumping.

(bird squawking) Oh, that seal, sure, savoring that fish, isn't he?

AMY: Yeah, he sure is.

Where's all the fish, sonny?

Where are they?

Huh?

Where'd they go?

I'd better mix that gas, Amy.

Mix that gas and fill that tank up.

Yeah, tank should be about out of fuel.

AMY: Got it?

Thank you.

Put it by the chippies.

You can open your chippies if you want to.

STEVE: We are not sticking around for this.

(motor ignites, putters out) (motor ignites, revs) (engine humming) MAN: Gonna push it right on around.

(Ellie chuckles) (engine humming, people chatting) (engine humming) I'm guessing that's it?

LUCAS (over walkie-talkie): Roger.

See you all at home.

ELLIE: My biggest fear, after not being able to fish for four years, was that I'd be the person that loses the boat.

(voice breaking): And the boat's my husband's.

And being able to fish is who we are.

So my fear for the last four years was I wasn't gonna be able to keep fishing.

Larry had the capability of working to support the boat.

I can't work at the level Larry did.

So I can't keep the boat alive without the boat catching fish.

So my biggest fear is losing the boat because who are we if we can't catch fish?

But we caught some fish this year, so we're okay.

We can hold on to the boat.

And to me, personally, the boat is who I am, fishing is who I am.

I have to be able to do it.

That was my biggest fear.

So it was nice to catch some fish this year.

LYONS: Our traditions and our responsibilities are always with nature and then, of course, the whole West Coast is dependent on the fish runs.

I mean, no matter what you say or whatever it is, when the fish are running, they're running.

And when they're not running, they're not running.

It doesn't care whether you're having a meeting or not.

So you have to drop the meeting and go fishing.

So it's nature in charge all the time.

And you have to understand and protect that foundation of life.

(Antone and Cheryl George harmonizing, drumming) (harmonizing, drumming continues) ♪ ♪ ELLIE (voiceover): I've been proud for the paths my boys have taken, the fishermen they've both become.

It's hard to be proud... (sighs) ...and to realize we've set them going down this path, but what are they gonna run into in their lifetime?

Are we gonna be able to turn salmon around and bring it back?

LARRY: It's about what Chief Seattle said.

All things are connected.

It's like the water, yeah, or like the blood in our veins.

He says the bloods in our veins connects all of our body.

And so life is-- it's all connected.

So when you, you think about, you just can't do this over here and, and not realize, because it's connected, that it'll have impacts over here.

Say we use the salmon as a miner's canary and say, okay, what do we need here for air quality?

What do we need here to, to deal with water quality?

How do we solve that problem here?

I never thought I'd see that in my lifetime, where we'd have water crisis within our little portion of the world here.

We don't want to be like the, the East Coast, where the salmon are the past, and then they've got major issues that they've been working on for generations to clean up their rivers, but they don't have nothing there left at all.

And how close are we to that tipping point?

Understanding that things that are happening right now with the world, "Kí7ce Tmícw," "Mother Earth," have been prophesized.

And the prophecies really talk a lot about the things that would begin to happen, that the Earth would purify itself, that there would be ways that the earth would have to purify itself so it could continue to live.

You know, the fires, you know, the flooding, you know, the earthquakes and those things are beginning to emerge, all of those things, even COVID, the purification of human beings, so the earth could live, because there was evidence, you could see it when the earth was still for a year or so, that rivers started to come back, that the ozone and the atmosphere started to close up.

So if you think about that, and it's a signal to mankind that we need to start doing something different.

And the salmon are a real indicator of that because the salmon are intricately linked to water, "Séwllkwe," the lifeblood of all living things.

You can't fix nature.

You know, you don't have a wrench big enough to fix nature.

I'm one of them people that believe that... ...the goodness of mankind, if they know, they'll prevail.

(drums beating, people harmonizing) "Xwian tse skwal i'tse schay."

Asking you to witness the work.

LAWRENCE SOLOMON: "Osiam Neschaleche Siam."

I want to thank each and every one of you for coming today, on behalf of the Lummi Nation, thanking each and every one for being here.

Today is our first salmon ceremony.

Today we will be giving thanks to the salmon, showing our appreciation to the salmon.

Without the salmon, we wouldn't be here today.

(singing in Lummi language, drumming) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Antone George harmonizing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ RICHARD "HUTCH-A-WILTON" SOLOMON: Today is a good day.

It's a good day for giving the greatest gratitude to the Salmon People, who gave up their life so our people can live.

This is how we're supposed to be.

(drums beating) LYONS: I used to like to listen to Yogi Berra.

He had a way of saying something.

He was a philosopher of sorts, yeah, funny, he said, "Well, when you come to the fork in the road, take it."

(laughs) Well, I'll tell you, there's a lot of people muddling around at that fork.

Take it.

(laughs) And then he said another thing that I use today.

I use this all the time now.

"Well," he said, "it ain't over till it's over."

And that's where I see us right now.

We're fighting.

We're willing to fight.

All hands, all hands on deck now.

All hands on deck.

(Antone George and the WestShore Singers singing "Salmon People") ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ LARRY: So we've got to not forget who we are and where we come from and that is we're the salmon people.

Who are we gonna be if there are no salmon?

(Antone and Cheryl George harmonizing, drum beating) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪