Wayne Suttles (1918–2005) was an American

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

and

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

. He was the leading authority on the ethnology and linguistics of the

Coast Salish people 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 one o ...

of the Northwest Coast of North America.

Biography

Wayne Suttles grew up on a dairy farm in Bothell, Washington, attending high school in town before going on to study at the University of Washington. He graduated from the institution in 1941 with a degree in anthropology. He served as a naval Japanese language officer on Okinawa during World War II, before returning to the University of Washington in 1946 to begin studying for his Ph.D. in anthropology. As a student of Erna Gunther at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

, Suttles in 1951, was the first to be awarded a Ph.D. in anthropology at that institution. He did

ethnographic Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

work with Northwest Coast people, especially the Coast Salish, beginning in the mid-1940s and linguistic work beginning in the mid-1950s. His publications on the

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 ...

, including his interpretation of the relationship between culture and environment and the nature of the social network, have had a significant influence on both ethnographic and archaeological work in the region. As editor of Vol. 7, Northwest Coast, of the ''Handbook of North American Indians'', Suttles was instrumental in making scholars active in different kinds of research aware of each other's work. He also testified as an expert witness in several legal cases relating to Native rights in both Washington State and British Columbia, the most important of which was R. v. Sparrow, which established Native fishing rights across Canada. His 2004 grammar of the Musqueam language was a milestone in Salish studies.

Selected works

*(2004) ''Musqueam Reference Grammar''. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. *(1998) The Ethnographic Significance of the Fort Langley Journals. pp. 163–210 in ''The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-1830'', Edited by Morag Maclachlan. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. *(1987) ''Coast Salish Essays''. Vancouver: Talonbooks; Seattle: University of Washington. *(1974) ''The Economic Life of the Coast Salish of Haro and Rosario Straits''. New York: Garland.

References

1918 births 2005 deaths University of Washington alumni Linguists of Salishan languages 20th-century American anthropologists {{US-anthropologist-stub