Visual journalism alum premieres documentary about Lummi Nation School basketball team

The documentary will be released as a four-part series on YouTube between June 8-29, 2026.

Producing a long-form documentary is unusual for a local paper the size of CDN. Wendt said he doesn’t think he could have done it anywhere else.

The idea to make this documentary really started in early 2024, back when Wendt had just graduated from Western and started working for CDN full-time as a visual journalist. At the time, Wendt remembers looking over CDN’s recent sports coverage and comparing it with scorebooks online.

“I went to our sports editor at the time and said, ‘Why haven’t we covered the Lummi Blackhawks? They’re kickin’ butt and we’ve never written a single thing about them.’”

The sports editor agreed. Wendt said his editor explained that it was challenging to travel to their games due to staffing and resources at the time. However, after Wendt pointed out how little coverage CDN had given the Lummi Blackhawks, his editor sent him out to cover one of their games.

“As soon as I stepped inside that gym, I realized it was something special,” Wendt said. “The whole vibe of it was completely different than anywhere else I’d experienced in the two counties up here.”

Wendt kept going back to Lummi Blackhawks games, covering them here and there, always walking loving the way they play.

Eventually, Wendt decided to pitch the idea of a long-form documentary to his editors along with Zeller-Singh. He thought a longer documentary would be the best format because he knew there would be a lot of storylines to cover.

The documentary touches on the history of the Lummi Nation School and how the community wants to bring its children home after many left to attend public schools elsewhere in the county. Then, the documentary covers reservation basketball, or “rez ball,” a style of basketball that involves lots of running, numerous shots, quick possessions and turnovers. From there, the documentary follows the Lummi Blackhawks season as they fight to defend their title as reigning state champions.

While they were making the documentary, Wendt and Zeller-Singh embedded with the Lummi Blackhawks for six months, between November 2025 and March 2026. Wendt said it was a big ask, but building connections with the Lummi Nation school and the team’s coaches opened them up to the idea of having him and Zeller-Singh embed with them for such a long period of time. Wendt said it would have been impossible to build that trust if he wasn’t a somewhat familiar face in the community through his previous coverage of the Lummi Blackhawks and other local stories.

Having spent so long with the Lummi Blackhawks, Wendt said dealing with high school boys is quite funny, adding that he and Zeller-Singh got pretty chummy with all the boys by the end.

“It was definitely a little slow going at first, but just by showing up and being a part of the team, we definitely grew on them, I think,” Wendt said.

It wasn’t just the team; Wendt said he and the rest of the CDN team forged relationships with the coaches and leadership at Lummi Nation School. Wendt said they built a very strong relationship with Head Coach Jerome Toby and Principal Heather Leighton, especially in the beginning, to make sure everything would go smoothly.

Overall, Wendt said that this entire project was a team effort, including CDN staff like Zeller-Singh and managing editor of visuals/design, Jaya Flanary (a 2021 VJ alum).

Zeller-Singh said he was mostly responsible for scheduling interviews, building the schedule around games and practices, and doing storyboarding for the documentary while Wendt did the majority of filming, as well as all the editing and graphics.

Zeller-Singh said that working together on this documentary helped him and Wendt create a stronger bond beyond just being coworkers.

“We’re next to each other when it comes to the office, and we talk here and there, but through this whole project, we’ve become really close friends, and we can chop it up and talk about basically anything and everything,” Zeller-Singh said.

Once the basketball season ended in March, Zeller-Singh said he had to go right back to his normal job at CDN covering sports and editing the paper. He said Finn really had to lock in and start editing the documentary from scratch, spending hours each week basically on his own at the computer getting it done.

Wendt said that he always made fun little videos growing up, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do when he first came to Western in 2019.

“During the pandemic, I found my way in journalism and kind of got bit by the bug,” Wendt said. “It really provided a structured environment where I could understand how visuals play into journalism and the standards of that.”

Another big help for Wendt was being a part of the National Press Photographers Association student chapter, where he would get to spend time with his peers, work on projects, get instant feedback, make good friends, and build relationships.

When Wendt first started to consider the idea of making a documentary about the Lummi Blackhawks, he thought that there was no chance it would ever happen. Now, it’s happening.