(bright music) (tranquil music) - It's been a beautiful journey, learning about my identity.

When I was named, the elders told me, "You're too young to know right now, but you're gonna learn what your name means."

I was receiving my grandmother's name, Sxole-tenaut.

When I was starting out learning the language, I went to her hereditary chief, Tsi'li'xw, and I said, "What does my name mean?"

(tranquil music) He said, "Well, tenaut means the wife of, so you're tenaut of sxole."

One of my teachers told me that a sxole is a spiderweb or a net, (tranquil music) (water splashing) so it means the wife of the net.

- [Suhunep] We believe it was a gift from the creator.

- [Xwesultun] The reefnet gives us life.

It sustains us.

- [Rena] Such abundance for so many years, for millennia.

- [Suhunep] And they were run out at the point of a gun.

(gunshots firing) - [Narrator] Well, Lummi testified on the importance of the reefnets.

- [Judge] Silence in the court.

- [Narrator] It was big business.

- [Suhunep] They appropriated any economy that the indigenous people had.

- [Kusemaat] We must remember who we are and where we come from.

- [Tah-Mahs] 'Cause it is such a strong, important part of our history.

(tranquil music) (water splashing) - [Crew Member] Whenever you're ready.

- Okay.

"To the netwife.

Oh, ancient weaver, whose ancestral name I carry.

(contemplative music) (birds singing) How many hours of your life were spent gathering the wild-grown riches of our home?

(contemplative music) Willow roots and nettles for the reefnet.

The soft glow of mountain sides in winter.

(contemplative music) (water splashing) The sparkle of sun shining on summer rivers.

(contemplative music) (water gurgling) This beauty wakes the ancestors inside me, calls forth memories of creeks overflowing with the red riches of spawning salmon.

(water splashing) And I know your salt water blood still runs in me, like a gift from salmon brought home from the dark of the ocean deep, carried high into rocky valleys against swift currents of sparkling streams to dissolve and rise again like fog, burned away by the rising of a new day to shine again in me.

My eyes are your eyes.

As one identity, we see.

Across thousands of generations, we dance the dances of the salmon people, bear witness to endless turning tides and rolling waves.

With your voice, I sing songs of praise.

With the breath of your spirit, I lift prayers to the breeze.

Like baby spiders with new silk kites, they soar high above the world and into the future.

Like your prayers were carried across time to weave new webs, new nets, to catch nourishment for the people to see hope, to speak love, to live to be an ember, a spark that carries our fire through the night."

(contemplative music) (gentle music) (waves splashing) - The original people of the Salish Sea were salt water people.

They traveled by canoe.

(gentle music) They had many gifts from the creator.

(gentle music) One of those gifts was the sxole, the reefnet.

(gentle music) (water gurgling and splashing) - [Rena] The way that it's set up is two canoes anchor side by side, and there's a false reef anchored below them.

So when the salmon encounter the false reef, they swim up and into the net.

(gentle music) (water gurgling) - I think the most beautiful part of the old traditional reefnets were that there was purposely a hole in the back of the reefnet.

That was so at any one given time, not every fish was caught.

That's so important.

You don't catch the first.

You don't catch the last.

(gentle music) (water gurgling and splashing) - We lived amongst the natural law.

(gentle music) (water gurgling and splashing) We had to allow our older brothers to continue on their struggle of life up to the headwaters.

(heart thumping) (water splashing) - The belief is that the reefnet is like a womb and the salmon swimming in provide the spark of life to carry the people into a new season.

(gentle music) (heart thumping) That ties us to them in a spiritual way.

- We are the first descendants of this homeland and we know how to protect it.

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

But if you wanna see what she looks like, we gifted three story poles at Pe'pi'ow'elh (indistinct), San Juan Island National Historical Park for their centennial.

You'll see our reefnet captain and you'll see the male and female salmon.

(contemplative music) - The captains up in the top of the reefnet would be listening to the chants from the man on the beach who was guiding the salmon.

And then, soon as they would see them jumping into the net, the captains would call out and everyone that was in the canoe would be laying down so that they wouldn't be making noise or picking up on the teachings or protocols, 'cause these people could have been family or they could have been from other tribes.

(poignant music) - Reefnet sites.

(poignant music) They weren't bought and sold.

(poignant music) They were actually handed down in families, so any one particular reefnet site had always been run by the same family.

- We're talking about the reefnetters, plural, of the Salish Sea.

a small subgroup of people who live within the vast variety of ethnicities of indigenous groups that live throughout.

Only the Northern Straits speakers had reefnets, and that would be one Klallam tribe, the Beecher Bay Klallams, the Sooke, the Songhee, the Saanich.

Then, you get the Semiahmoo and you get to Lummi and Samish, and those are the Northern Straits speakers.

Pre-contact, there would be 10 to hundreds of different families within each of those nationalities who all fished and harvested in their own ways, in their own sights.

(poignant music) - Spirit of the sxole was our economy, our way of life.

- [Xwesultun] It would be such an abundance of wealth that every year, annually, one of the Northern Salish Straits-speaking tribes would host the other tribe.

Each tribe would go home with the overabundance of wealth that was harvested from that season.

They were connected through the reefnet.

(poignant music) (water gurgling) - It's not one government, it's two.

(disquieting music) Two governments infringed upon kinship in the Salish Sea.

(disquieting music) Our relatives are descendants on the other side of this imaginary border.

(disquieting music) How are we gonna fix those historical events (disquieting music) without any truth and reconciliation?

(disquieting music) - [Tah-Mahs] I never added up the years.

50, 60, 70 years, not reefnetting.

(water splashing) - [Xwesultun] 200 years is not a lot of time to do this much damage.

(machinery humming) - The handing down in families, that was all lost when that was taken away from us.

(wistful music)