The Salish peoples are
indigenous peoples
There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...
of the American and Canadian
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...
, identified by their use of the
Salishan languages
The Salishan languages ( ), also known as the Salish languages ( ), are a Language family, family of languages found in the Pacific Northwest in North America, namely the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washingt ...
which diversified out of Proto-Salish between 3,000 and 6,000 years ago.
The term "Salish" originated in the
modern era
The modern era or the modern period is considered the current historical period of human history. It was originally applied to the history of Europe and Western history for events that came after the Middle Ages, often from around the year 1500 ...
as an
exonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
created for linguistic research. Salish is an anglicization of Séliš, the
endonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
for the
Salish Tribes of the Flathead Reservation. The Séliš were the easternmost Salish people and the first to have a diplomatic relationship with the United States so their name was applied broadly to all peoples speaking a related language.
Salishan languages
The Salish (or Salishan) people are in four major groups:
Bella Coola (Nuxalk),
Coast Salish
The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak on ...
,
Interior Salish
The Interior Salish languages are one of the two main branches of the Salishan language family, the other being Coast Salish. It can be further divided into Northern and Southern subbranches. The first Interior Salish people encountered by Ameri ...
, and
Tsamosan, who each speak one of the
Salishan languages
The Salishan languages ( ), also known as the Salish languages ( ), are a Language family, family of languages found in the Pacific Northwest in North America, namely the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washingt ...
. The Tsamosan group is usually considered a subset of the broader Coast Salish peoples.
Among the four major groups of the Salish people, there are twenty-three documented languages. At least five of these are no longer in use, while the rest are seriously endangered. The majority of fluent Salish-speakers are elderly, and younger speakers are quite rare. In spite of this, there are ongoing efforts to keep the languages alive through revitalization programs planned and conducted by various tribal organisations. Currently, a team of scholars is conducting research on the languages in order to create reference material and educational resources.
Salish languages, especially those of the Coast peoples, are threatened primarily by assimilation. State programs such as the Canadian residential schools (where indigenous languages were prohibited) have been a major factor in reducing the number of fluent Salish speakers. Schools today, however, from the secondary to the university level, are actively promoting knowledge and use of the Salish languages.
Language and cultural revitalization
In 1988, the Self Governance Demonstration Project of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (the CSKT) was successful, and the U.S. government returned full autonomy to their tribal leadership in 1993. Over the following decades the CSKT has reverted to traditional governance in which Elders provide counsel, to the chief, on tribal policies, culture and education, and in turn tribal policies have grown out of a desire to strengthen the community's ties to their cultural heritage.
In a move to self-identify and push back against the effects of the
Indian Termination policy, namely assimilation, in 2016 the tribe chose to change their name from the anglicized "Salish-Prend d'Oreille" to Séliš-Ql̓ispé. The change was part of a wider movement to include more Salishan in the community's daily lives.
For the Séliš-Ql̓ispé, language and culture are entwined — through oral histories, food practices, horticulture, environment, and spirituality. By reviving the language, they hope to also reclaim their identity, their health, and their culture.
Community efforts to revitalize the Salishan language and culture, aside from efforts to teach classes on language (in some cases, full-immersion into the language with no falling back onto English), include such things as virtual tours and museums, such as th
Sq'éwlets which is a Stó:lō-Coast Salish Community in the Fraser River Valley. There is also the People's Center Museum
that opened in 1994 and hosts a rotating exhibition of Salish and Kootenai cultural artifacts. The museum is supplemented with an oral tradition of story-telling that explains the significance of the pieces on display and shares the stories of the people who lived in the time before and during the European invasion.
There have also been calls for
repatriation
Repatriation is the return of a thing or person to its or their country of origin, respectively. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as the return of mi ...
of artifacts across all indigenous tribes of the Americas as additional efforts to reclaim history and culture.
Powwows
The Arlee Espapqeyni Celebration is a yearly July 4 powwow hosted by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and is located in Arlee, Montana. It runs for a period of several days and involves dance competitions and singing competitions (and non-competitive singing and drum performances).
In 1884 the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) made it illegal for any Indian dances to be performed, and so the tribes danced in secret.
A new, religiously influenced dance called the
Ghost Dance began spreading from tribe to tribe at a rate that the U.S. government was wary of, and in 1890 a military unit was dispatched to Wounded Knee to interrupt a ceremony of the Ghost Dance among the Sioux. Roughly 200 Sioux were gunned down in what is now known as the
Wounded Knee Massacre
The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, involved nearly three hundred Lakota people killed by soldiers of the United States Army. More than 250 people of the Lakota were killed and 51 wounded (4 men and 47 women a ...
.
Modern powwows came about after the armistice of World War 1, when Native American veterans returned home from war; celebrations were held for their homecoming and included traditional dances. A new sense of community also came into being with the end of the war, along with the proximity of reservations to one another, and the celebrations began to include neighboring tribes rather than remain exclusive to individual tribes.
When Plains Indians were resettled in urban areas following World War II, per the policy of the U.S. government, their culture and traditions went with them and became widely spread—which is why many powwow dances and songs are from the Plains tradition. This dispersal of people and culture into large community centers also tightened the inter-tribal networks that had come into existence after the first World War.
Art and material culture
Salish weaving
Salish weavers used both plant and animal fibers. Coast Salish peoples kept flocks of
woolly dogs, bred for their wool, to shear and spin the fibers into yarn. The Coast Salish would also use mountain goat wool, waterfowl down, and various plant fibers including cedar bark, nettle fiber, milkweed and hemp. They would combine these materials in their weaving. A type of white clay was pounded into the fibers, possibly for the purpose of extracting oil from the wool. Not all Salish blankets were made with dog's wool—commoners' blankets were usually made of plant fibers. The designs of Salish weavings commonly featured graphical patterns such as zig-zag, diamond shapes, squares, rectangles, V-shapes and chevrons.
In the early to mid-nineteenth century, the fur trade brought
Hudson's Bay blankets to the Pacific Northwest. The influx of these cheaper, machine-made blankets led to the decline of native wool blankets that were expensive and labor-intensive to produce. Salish weaving continued to a lesser extent, but the weavers largely transitioned to using sheep's wool yarn brought to the area by traders, as it was less costly than keeping the salmon-eating woolly dogs.
There was a revival of Salish weaving in the 1960s, and the
Salish Weavers Guild was formed in 1971.
Use of cedar
Plentiful in the Pacific Northwest, the
Western Red Cedar was a vital resource in Coast Salish peoples' lives. Canoes,
longhouses, totem poles, baskets, mats, clothing, and more were all made using cedar.
Totem poles
Totem poles were less common in Coast Salish culture than with neighboring non-Salish
Pacific Northwest Coast peoples such as the
Haida,
Tsimshian
The Tsimshian (; ) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terrace and ...
,
Tlingit, and
Kwakiutl tribes. It wasn't until the twentieth century that the totem pole tradition was adopted by the northern Coast Salish peoples including the Cowichan, Comox, Pentlatch, Musqueam, and Lummi tribes. These tribes created fewer free-standing totem poles, but are known for carving house posts in the interior and exterior of longhouses.
File:Xwmetskwiyam Image 003.png, Musqueam interior house post
File:Xwmetskwiyam Image 002.png, Musqueam exterior house posts
File:Cowichan Housefront LACMA AC1997.271.26.jpg, Cowichan housefront with carved house posts
File:Canada, columbia britannica, salish della costa, palo da abitazione, da songish e cowichan.jpg, Salish wooden carvings at The Field Museum, Chicago
File:Lands-in-the-sky totem pole, Suquamish, 1963.jpg, Totem pole by Lummi carver Joe Hillaire, 1962
File:2019-07-20 International arrivals hall of Vancouver International Airport 0935.jpg, "Musqueam welcome figures" by Susan A. Point in the International Arrivals hall of Vancouver International Airport
Salish peoples located in the Pacific Northwest and parts of Southern Alaska were known to build
totem poles that were meant to symbolize a tribe member's spirit animal or family crest. They continue on this legacy today by selling hand carved totem poles formed in the same fashion.
Contemporary Salish artists
*
Susan A. Point is a Musqueam wood carver and glass artist. Her work "Musqueam Welcome Figures", inspired by Coast Salish house posts, is featured in the
Vancouver International Airport.
*
Matika Wilbur is a Swinomish and Tulalip photographer, and the creator of
Project 562, which documents contemporary Native Americans from the 562 federally-recognized tribes in the United States.
*
Debra Sparrow is a Musqueam artist and weaver. Her weaving was featured in The Fabric of Our Land: Salish Weaving exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology in 2017–2018.
*
Corwin Clairmont is a Salish Kootenai printmaker, and a conceptual and installation artist.
Subgroups and territory

Salish people groups are subdivided by their respective branches of the Salishan language family: Coast Salish (peoples) speaking the
Coast Salish languages, Interior Salish (peoples) speaking the
Interior Salish languages
The Interior Salish languages are one of the two main branches of the Salishan languages, Salishan language family, the other being Coast Salish languages, Coast Salish. It can be further divided into Northern and Southern subbranches. The first I ...
, and the Nuxalk (Bella Coola) people speaking the
Nuxalk language.
The Nuxalk are the northernmost Salish peoples, located in and around
Bella Coola, British Columbia. This area is separated from the main continuous land area known to be populated by Salish peoples.
Below is a list of most, but not all, Salish tribes and bands, listed from north to south.
Coast Salish
The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak on ...
*Chehalis people
**
Lower Chehalis people
The Lower Chehalis ( ) are a Southwestern Coast Salish people indigenous to Washington state. Today, the Lower Chehalis do not maintain a distinct sovereign identity, although people of Lower Chehalis descent are enrolled in several federally ...
**
Upper Chehalis people
The Upper Chehalis ( ) are a Southwestern Coast Salish people Indigenous to Washington state.
Classification and name
The Upper Chehalis are a Southwestern Coast Salish
The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistica ...
*
Comox
*
Cowlitz
*
Cowichan
*
Halkomelem-speaking peoples
*
Homalco (Xwemalhkwu)
*
Klahoose
*
Klallam
*
Lushootseed-speaking peoples
*
Lummi
*Matsqui
*
Musqueam
The Musqueam Nation ( Hunquminum: ) is a First Nation whose traditional territory encompasses the western half of what is now Greater Vancouver, in British Columbia, Canada. It is governed by a band council and is known officially as the Musq ...
*
Nisqually
*
Nooksack
*
Pentlatch
*
Puyallup
*
Quinault
*
Saanich
*Scəẁaθən məsteyəxʷ (
Tsawwassen First Nation)
*
Shishalh (Sechelt or Shíshálh)
*
Skokomish (
Twana)
*
Squamish
*
Tillamook
*
Sliammon (Tla A'min)
*
Tsleil-Waututh
The Tsleil-Waututh Nation (, ), formerly known as the Burrard Indian Band or Burrard Inlet Indian Band, is a First Nations band government in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The Tsleil-Waututh Nation ("TWN") are Coast Salish peoples w ...
*
T'Sou-ke
Interior Salish
The Interior Salish languages are one of the two main branches of the Salishan language family, the other being Coast Salish. It can be further divided into Northern and Southern subbranches. The first Interior Salish people encountered by Ameri ...
*Northern
**
Secwepemc (Shuswap)
**
St'at'imc (Lillooet)
**
Nlaka'pamux
The Nlakaʼpamux or Nlakapamuk ( ; ), also previously known as the ''Thompson'', '' Thompson River Salish'', ''Thompson Salish'', ''Thompson River Indians'' or ''Thompson River people'', and historically as the ''Klackarpun'', ''Haukamaugh'', ''K ...
(Thompson River people)
*Southern
**
Okanagan
The Okanagan ( ), also called the Okanagan Valley and sometimes the Okanagan Country, is a region in the Canadian province of British Columbia defined by the basin of Okanagan Lake and the Canadian portion of the Okanagan River. It is part of ...
-speaking peoples
***
Colville
***
Sanpoil
***
Syilx
The Syilx () people, also known as the Okanagan, Suknaqinx, or Okinagan people, are a First Nations in Canada, First Nations and Native Americans in the United States, Native American people whose traditional territory spans the Canada–United St ...
(Okanagan)
***
Sinixt
***
Nespelem
***
Methow
**
Entiat
**
Wenatchi
The Wenatchi people or Šnp̍əšqʷáw̉šəxʷi / Np̓əšqʷáw̓səxʷ ("People in the between") are Native Americans who originally lived near the confluence of the Columbia and Wenatchee Rivers in Central Washington state. Their language ...
**
Sinkiuse-Columbia
**
Chelan people
**
Spokane people
The Spokan or Spokane people are a Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau, Native American Plateau tribe who inhabit the eastern portion of present-day Washington (state), Washington state and parts of northern Idaho in the United States o ...
**
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (Flathead)
***
Bitterroot Salish
***
Kalispel (Pend d'Oreille)
**
Coeur d'Alene people
The Coeur d'Alene Tribe ( ; also Skitswish; ) are a Native American tribe and one of five federally recognized tribes in the state of Idaho. The Coeur d'Alene have sovereign control of their Coeur d'Alene Reservation, which includes a significa ...
See also
*
Coast Salish peoples
The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak on ...
*
Coast Salish Art
External links
Coast Salish of Victoria, BCConfederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead ReservationThe Fabric of Our Land: Salish WeavingExhibit at UBC Museum of Anthropology
References
{{authority control
Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest
First Nations in British Columbia
Native American tribes in Idaho
Native American tribes in Montana
Native American tribes in Oregon
Native American tribes in Washington (state)