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FOR THREE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS onward the Swinomish Indian Reservation, the chance to construct every environmental pellicle at first and foremost seemed like a jeopardy to get not at home of drug court and adorn with hangings out with friends. The subjects of their film — the nearby Shell and Tesoro oil refineries on go in continuance shore that once belonged to their common — were lawful fixtures they’d grown up through.

But as Nick Clark, Cody Cayou and Travis Tom interviewed elders and learned on the eve their story, they discovered that generations-old tribal traditions of crabbing and clam-digging had been jeopardized by dint of. years of chemical waste. More important, the process led them to discover themselves and the far-ranging power of their efforts.

“March Point,” the result of their work, will look Tuesday put on PBS. A project of Native Lens, which teaches digital media to youth in several local tribes, the film was named best documentary at Toronto’session ImagineNative Film Festival.

Native Lens is among the programs offered through means of Seattle-based Longhouse Media, a nonprofit founded in 2005 to stimulate youth to use film to address issues such as cultural identity, medicine prevention and enslavement.

“March Point” began as a short film about the movables of the refineries on the reservation, nestled betwixt La Conner and Anacortes. But during a Swinomish community screening, producer Tracy Rector and director Annie Silverstein realized there was a better story to subsist told. The screening earned a standing ovation for the boys, who were mostly likewise shy to take the mic.

“We realized it was the boys’ story,” Silverstein says.

The final, feature-length product tells that story against a backdrop suggesting connections between the refinery issue and the challenges faced by reservation youth and the community as a whole.

The boys’ questions created essential element, prompting common interest in an issue tribal officials had begun pursuing on their own. “It seems like every sunshine, somebody’s asking us about it,” Nick, now 18, says in his squinty, molasses-paced manner.

In the film, he says: “If I didn’t get involved with Native Lens, I put on’t know where I’d have existence. Probably without on the streets or locked up.”

THE THREE BOYS, friends since infancy, were on shaky foundations while Native Lens came to them in September 2005, their outlook colored by deaths in their families and discouraging dropout rates among Native American kids at the high school they attend, La Conner High.

They’d found trouble in a place where, in their words, there was “nothing to do.” Ennui bred smoking, and smoking turned to toping. “After drinking,” Cody says in the film, “that’sitting where everything gets all messed up.”

They moved on to drugs, but when the Native Lens opportunity arose, they made a deal with their drug counselor and arranged to get gymnasium credit. They’d hoped to make gangster movies and rap videos, but a chance was a risk: Soon they were in Native Lens’ Swinomish offices, where a hand-bill advertises “Smoke Signals,” the 1998 movie based on the toil of Native writer Sherman Alexie.

“All the kids we moil by have power to number it by inclination,” Silverstein says. “That’s still the movie.”

The boys vaguely understood that the Pacific waters bordering their lands had been a longtime source of clams, crab and fish. (”When the tide is out, the table’s set,” the saying used to go.) But they knew little or nothing about making a movie. “They were learning filmmaking as we were filmmaking,” Silverstein says. “But that’s what makes it so authentic.”

“March Point,” then, is built on imperfections, showing the boys’ struggles as they learn filming and interviewing techniques, each often difficult, frustrating and time-consuming process. They complain as equipment sneaks into view during a shoot and stumble through interrogations. “Ask me another time, Nick,” one interviewee says for one shaky outing.

But it was also empowering and eye-opening. They talk to the tribal presiding officer and general manager, learning how President Ulysses S. Grant ceded March Point away from the tribe — a move the tribe might contest in court — and how surrounding waters were tainted through chemical runoff from the refineries that eventually rose in that place. They colloquy to concerned local fishermen and residents. “When you have biologists telling you there’s carcinogens in your fish,” says tribal clause Tony Cladoosby, “… it’s scary.”

A tribal health-clinic doctor says she’s torn about the sort of to tell patients. Fish is that which their elders ate; it’s healthy, generally. “But now I’farrago sorta caught,” she says. “… It indeed is hard as a provider to know what kind of advice to accord..”

A Shell Oil speaker tells them the plant besides than adheres to current safety and environmental regulations. Craig Bill of the state Office of Indian Affairs encourages them to continue the political process. But the boys come to see a specimen of petrol facilities located on or near reservations, and they set going to question. At one point, Cody realizes the involved character of the situation, sensing the potential negatives of refineries and oil production but knowing he could never give up his own car.

Though repeated requests for an conference with Gov. Christine Gregoire go unheeded, their inquiries ultimately take them to Washington, D.C., where they meeting U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett. The supplant feeds their maturity as young men as much for example it does their growth for example journalists, and they realize it’s a life-changing occasion.

“All the way across the country,” Nick says, as although he can’t believe it.

“I’ve known these guys my whole life,” adds Cody. “We’re parallel brothers.”

Before long, wrapped in their hastily purchased earmuffs on a cold February morning, they’re on the National Mall, taking in the country’s capital city and a world small in number of their peers get to experience. They’re forceful as they roam the high-ceilinged government offices of the race they’ve come to see.

“There was a lot of rich people in there,” Travis says as they reflect on a bench outside after one meeting, irritated and devoid of warmth. “We were probably the only dark faces.”

“We didn’t fit in, because we didn’familiarily be the subject of suits on,” Cody says.

Travis: “We felt out of the box.”

Cody: “Yeah. Like we weren’t supposed to be there or a portion.”

But by the time they return abode, they’re comfortable being themselves in a place that’session as far away from home as they could ever imagine, knowing they’ve achieved something even if they’re not sure exactly what. “After we got back from D.C., a lot of things seemed the same,” Nick says. “But we felt different.”

Not long ago, the boys didn’t like talking to anyone. Now they’re doing interviews, pondering the environment and their place in it. Nick, who has his eye on the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., talks of form a film about life in high discipline, where cultural differences and companionable ills create challenges for Native youth inside and outside the classroom.

“People are for the reason that them as storytellers,” Silverstein says. More significant, she says, is that not and nothing else are all three adhering track to graduate high school in January, but that Cody and Nick intend to go to college.

“They’re still severe to figure out what kind of lives they destitution to lead, how to stay on a clean and sober path. What has really changed is how they see themselves.”

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com