(bright music) (gentle music) - The original people of the Salish Sea had many gifts from the creator.

One of those gifts was the sxole, the reef net.

- [Rena] The reef net is like a womb.

The salmon provide the spark of life to carry the people into a new season.

- There was purposely a hole in the back of the reef net.

Not every fish was caught.

- Hundreds of different families fished and harvested in their own ways on their own sites.

They were connected through the reef net.

- Our spiritual journey with the sxole is much more than we can share with you right here in front of this camera.

(water splashing) - I believe in the truth.

(dramatic music) I believe that the state of Washington must be honest.

- 200 years is not a lot of time to do this much damage.

The oceans tell a story, the salmon tell a story, everything's telling a story right now, and nobody's listening.

- In Saanich, they call them the quintalis, the basket dancing stones.

They say the old people used to be able to pierce the stones and the stones would screech and the song would come from the stone.

The creator threw the stones and created the island for our people.

The male stone is crying a little tear of joy, a heart shaped symbol right here.

It reminds me of Mount Baker because at the signing of the 1855 Point Elliott Treaty, they say the water that runs from Mount Baker are the teardrops of the mountain.

(dramatic music) - [Daniel] The Treaty of Point Elliott is the treaty that the tribes north of Everett into the Canadian border were party to in January of 1855.

Article V was known as the subsistence clause.

- It states in the articles that we will forever be allowed to fish in our usual and accustomed fishing stations.

There's one journal that talks about when they sailed in and anchored out, they lower down their dinghy and they do a reconnaissance.

It says, "Upon closer observation, they observed the Indians operating this crude apparatus."

That apparatus was our reef net.

- Salmon did not really become an integral part of the settler economy until the canning industry, which started on the Columbia River in the 1860s.

- Why was this reef net technology kept so secretive?

It was really designed for this area, and it was such an abundance of wealth.

When you're looking at a map, those tides will carry the sockeye into that channel, and then they'll hit those islands from the south, and that's where the reef nets will be set up.

- They became the richest hunter-gatherer tribe in the world, period, because of reef net fishing.

- And so they capitalized on it.

(dramatic music) - [Daniel] It wasn't until the 1890s that the canneries began to tap into the resource in the San Juan Islands and in Bellingham.

- Then they built the traps, of course, in front of all the reef net sites.

- The fish trap was actually modeled after reef nets, but they took the community participation out so that just one person, the cannery owner or the trap owner, was gonna benefit.

- The state passed a law that said you couldn't have any fishing gear within a thousand yards of a fish trap, which forced the Lummis out of Legoe Bay.

- [Daniel] And the fish trap was a very efficient device, so efficient, they practically fished the salmon to extinction.

- It really does come down to a value system from not valuing the salmon to finding out you can create a lot of money on them.

(people yelling) - [Daniel] In 1901, a total of 1,380,590 cases were harvested.

That wasn't the largest harvest ever.

1917 was nearly 2 million.

- The fish traps are labyrinths operating 24/7.

If you don't tend the fish trap, the fish will just die in the middle of it because they can't get back out.

That happened over and over and over again.

The canneries would always catch more than they could handle.

- [Raven] The stories that you hear is people who were reef natives would go out to the sites.

Oh, there's a fish trap there piled down and go out to the next site.

There's a fish trap there.

Go to the next reef net site, fish trap there.

- If you were to walk on Legoe Bay in 1920, it would stink so bad, you wouldn't want to be on it, and you would have to pick your way through dead salmon.

- The Alaska Packers Association threatened a tribal member with a revolver.

(people yelling) So Lummi brought the Alaska Packers Association to court.

(gentle music) - Our principal means of sustenance, especially during certain seasons of the year, is fishing.

Several years ago, white men begin to encroach on our grounds not satisfied with equal rights.

They have yearly made additional obstructions to prevent our catching fish.

They have driven us from our old camping grounds on the beach and have so treated us that we feel we must now appeal to you for assistance.

We, the Indians of this reservation, do therefore earnestly pray that you will call upon the US District Attorney of Seattle to prosecute those who are robbing us of our lawful rights.

- In my research, I found that there may have been some conflict of interest.

Judge C.H.

Hanford, who presided in the case, was apparently highly invested in the commercial fishing industry.

Later after the court case in 1907, he invented a can crimping machine for use in the canneries.

(gentle music) - The fish traps went away in the '30s.

Reef netting was reintroduced into Legoe Bay, but mostly by white reef netters.

By the time I came in the '70s, I don't believe there were any tribal fishermen at Legoe Bay.

- The United States government signed a legal instrument guaranteeing that the sovereign people will have their technology, but the state of Washington infringed on that sovereignty.

- [Ellie] We have the only tribal reef net.

How are we gonna bring this back to the children?

They've gotta know fishing to know our history and know our importance.