Introducing Season 2 of As She Rises, hosted by Grace Lynch.

Straddling the border between the US and Canada, the Skagit Watershed is a haven for sea creatures– the only river in the lower 48 states where all five species of Pacific salmon spawn year after year. The “Magic Skagit” is in peril: the ways of life it has sustained for the communities along its shores are faltering under years of settler disruption, and upstream, its headwaters originate in a pool of unprotected land threatened by extractive industries. Still, there’s hope in numbers: a cross-border coalition of federal, Tribal, and political leadership on all levels, dedicated to saving the Skagit River.

“You must have cleaned a lot of fish.” I say. // “I think we cleaned out all of Puget Sound…”

Won’t be long before all the fish are gone, then the cannery will go, and all we’ll have is hunger and sorrow.”

Welcome to season two of As She Rises. In this episode, we visit the land currently known as Washington. Poet laureate and Lummi Nation member Rena Priest reads her poem, “Remembering Ta’ta at T’am whiq sen,” and explains the relationship between salmon’s life cycles and the communities they fuel. Amy Trainer, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s Environmental Policy Director, leads us through the fight she and other members of the Washington Wild coalition waged to prevent extractive industries from staging a catastrophic mining operation in the headwaters of the Skagit Watershed.