(soft piano music) (urgent music) (graphic whooshing) - Welcome to "The Newsfeed."

I'm Paris Jackson.

A new season of the Cascade PBS docuseries "Origins" is here.

Season three focuses on the tradition of reef net fishing by local Indigenous tribes, examining the innovative method and unlocking the cultural, spiritual, and legal story behind the practice.

The filmmaker behind the series says today there are very few captains with a reef net fishing license, and only one of them is a tribal member.

"The Last Reef Netters" director, Samuel Wolf, shares with me why he had to tell this story.

So tell me, what is reef net fishing and why did you wanna shine this light on it?

- Reef net fishing is an ancient fishing technique practiced by North Strait's Salish nations for thousands of years.

And the way that it works is almost paradoxical, because the canoes that they use to fish are stationary, they're not moving through the water.

Instead, they would suspend a net between the canoes and let the fish come to them.

And it gets even more paradoxical than that because they would actually intentionally let a portion of the catch pass through via a hole in the back of the net.

I've often described it as this beautiful, stubborn paradox.

Beautiful in the sense that it invited community participation across these communities, stubborn in the sense that it's endured over thousands of years despite multiple efforts to eradicate it, whether those are environmental factors or legislative action.

The reason I was drawn to it is because when I initially did research on it, I discovered that there was only 12 captains left with a reef net fishing license, and only one of them was an enrolled tribe member.

So you had this dynamic where you had this centuries old fishing technique that was essentially ubiquitous across this culture, yet today there's only one captain left.

So that was kind of my in to the series.

And personally speaking, I am a member of Choctaw Nation, so I'm also a tribe member, but I didn't come to become an enrolled tribe member until I was in my twenties, so - Wow.

- I kind of connected with this sense of having this critical part of your heritage that you were several steps removed from.

- Since there is one tribal member with a permit, how has this impacted tribal communities?

- Yeah, so in one of the interviews that I conducted for the documentary, one of the subjects said something really insightful.

I asked a similar question, and he just looked at me and said, "Our people are grieving and we don't even know it."

So I think when you have this intrinsic part of your identity or your heritage, your culture that you're removed from, there's just like, this loss, this internal loss that you don't even know that you're reckoning with.

I think there's also an acknowledgement piece of the equation, because different cultures, different communities, different people all have aspects of their history that are important.

- What do you hope people learn from watching the series?

- I've often described the project as a conversation starter, and by that I mean we weren't able to cover everything about this story because of time constraints and budget constraints, but my hope is that ultimately it evokes an emotional response from viewers and that they feel compelled to go and explore reef netting on their own time to discover even more about the heritage.

(urgent music continues) - "The Last Reef Netters: premieres on March 21st at 8:50 PM on Cascade PBS.

"Origins" is a grant-funded project.

This year's grant is now open for submissions through April 18th.

(urgent music continues) In honor of International Women's Day, the YWCA of King and Snohomish Counties held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate (crowd cheering) the reopening of its historic 100-year-old Seneca building after it closed for more than two years for rehab work.

The newly remodeled building will serve multiple uses that include more than 100 affordable housing units, direct service programs, and administrative offices.

(urgent music continues) I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching "The Newsfeed," your destination for nonprofit Northwest news.

Go to cascadepbs.org for more great local coverage.

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