In this book, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, and Aboriginal leaders describe the Coast Salish, Aboriginal peoples living in western British Columbia and Washington State. They focus on how Coast Salish lives and identities have been influences by the two colonizing nations and on by shifting Aboriginal circumstances. The volume builds on new scholarship to move beyond existing academic views of the Coast Salish, which largely derive from ecological anthropology, in creating a new view of the Coast Salish world.

Contributors point to the continual reshaping of Coast Salish identities and our understandings of them through litigation and language revitalization, as well as community efforts to reclaim their connections with the environment. Equally important is the development of much more detailed local and regional history and archaeology. They point to significant continuity of networks of kinfolk, spiritual practices, and understandings of landscape.

This is the first book-length effort to directly incorporate Aboriginal perspectives and a broad interdisciplinary approach to research about the Coast Salish.