(upbeat music) - I'm Starla Sampaco in the Crosscut KCTS 9 newsroom.

In a small warehouse in Seattle SoDo, a business and cultural revolution is taking place.

The Snoqualmie tribe is working with Nooksack artist and designer, Louie Gong, to make and sell blankets designed by native artists.

In 2019, the tribe bought Gong's company, Eighth Generation, which had marketed native designed wool blankets for years.

But the blankets had to be made overseas.

For well over a century, Pendleton Woolen Mills was the well-known producer of so-called Indian blankets.

They weren't native owned and only started hiring native designers in the 1990s.

Native art is a huge industry, but little of the proceeds flow to native causes.

Soon, the Snoqualmie tribe, Eighth Generation collaboration will be in a new expanded warehouse, making genuine native blankets with their own proprietary weaving equipment.

Gong says, quote, "We're not an emerging business anymore.

We're going to be an emerging global player."

I'm Starla Sampaco, via nonprofit Northwest news and culture every day on Crosscut.com.

(upbeat music)