TOBY MCLEOD grew up on a fishing boat. Before he could walk, he said, he swears he remembers dozing off in bed and waking up among fishing gear, his father having carried him aboard in the early morning darkness.
McLeod’s father and grandfather were both tribal fishermen; his father started at the age of 11, in 1957. On fishing trips, he and his dad would take their boat up to Cattle Point, a lookout on the southeastern tip of San Juan Island, the second-largest island in the San Juan Archipelago in Washington’s Puget Sound. There, in the heart of Samish traditional territory, grassy dunes rose from the calm sea water, ringed with jagged glacier-carved rocks. Just offshore, thick kelp stalks reached up from under the surface, connected to bulb-shaped heads and slick, hairlike fronds that swayed in the current, like kite tails.
