Southern Coast Salish

Suzanne Crawford O’Brien

Lushootseed, Twana, Tuwaduq, Puget Sound Salish

Southern Coast Salish includes the speakers of Lushootseed and Tuwaduq languages. Lushootseed language speakers were traditionally found from Samish Bay in the north to the base of Puget Sound in the south, including the watersheds that drain into Puget Sound and extend into the Cascade mountain range. Northern Lushootseed languages include Swinomish, Skagit, Stillaguamish, Snohomish, and Samish. Southern Lushootseed languages include the Snoqualmie, Suquamish, Duwamish, Puyallup, Nisqually, Skykomish, and Squaxin. Tuwaduq-speaking cultures are associated with Hood Canal and the areas around the Skokomish River watershed, and include the Quilcene and Skokomish.

Prior to colonialism, over fifty different indigenous groups lived throughout the Puget Sound and Hood Canal region, each with at least one winter village and several summer locations. Such communities were most often identified with the watershed upon which they lived, and their names reflected that they were “the people of” that particular waterway. Ties were most strong amongst those groups who shared the same watershed, but a social kinship network linked Southern Coast Salish territories, creating an interrelated web of relationships that united the region. While indigenous systems of governance certainly existed, there were no formal political institutions that fit United States governmental definitions of “tribes.” The treaty-making process of the 1850s sought to do just this, combining previously independent groups into tribal affiliations.

Federally-recognized Southern Coast Salish tribal communities include the Samish, Upper Skagit, Swinomish, Stillaguamish, Tulalip, Suquamish, Snoqualmie, Muckleshoot, Puyallup, Nisqually, Squaxin Island, and Skokomish. The Duwamish remain a tribal community within Seattle, but are not federally recognized.

Southern Coast Salish population before 1770 has been estimated at around 12,600 people. Epidemic diseases struck the area beginning in the 1770s, and by the 1850s the population was estimated at 5,000. By 1880, the population of native people living on reservations was estimated to be somewhat below 2,000 (Eells 1985). Populations began to recover in the 1920s, and by the early twenty-first there were approximately 28,000 enrolled members of federally-recognized Coast Salish tribes in Washington State. In the 2010 national census, 20,260 individuals identified as belonging partly or wholly to the Puget Sound Salish tribal grouping.

Lushootseed and Tuwaduq are both languages within the Coast Salish language group, which is part of the Salishan family of languages. The Salishan language family includes the Coast Salish, the Bella Coola, and Interior Salish divisions. There are twenty-three Coast Salish languages, including three within the northern Lushootseed branch (Skagit, Sauk-Suiattle, Snohomish), and three within the southern Lushootseed branch (Duwamish-Suquamish, Puyallup, Nisqually). The Tuwaduq language includes the Quilcene and Skokomish dialects (Czaykowska-Higgins 1997; Jorgensen 1969; Kroeber 1999).

In 1855, territorial governor Isaac Stevens signed a series of treaties with Coast Salish tribes, wherein they ceded land to the United States in return for reservations and the rights to continue to hunt, fish, and gather in their usual and accustomed territories. Southern Coast Salish communities were signatories to the Medicine Creek Treaty, the Point-No-Point Treaty, and the Treaty of Point Elliott, which established the Squaxin Island, Nisqually, Puyallup, Port Madison, Tulalip, Swinomish, and Skokomish reservations. While the treaties were signed in 1855, they were not ratified for several years, during which time settlers continued to occupy native-owned land. Displeasure with settler abuses and the initial proposal of reservations away from their traditional waterways led to the 1855-56 Indian War. In 1857, the Muckleshoot reservation was established by executive order.

Early in the second half of the nineteenth century a new religious movement arose, the Indian Shaker Church. Led by John and Mary Slocum, the new church provided an indigenous alternative to Myron Eells’ Congregationalist church. The Shaker Church drew on indigenous approaches to healing and spiritual songs, worked to strengthen community ties, and affirmed indigenous identity (Amoss 1982; Waterman 1924; Barnett 1957). The Indian Shaker Church would grow quickly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, spreading to California, Idaho, and north to British Columbia. It soon became the predominant form of indigenous religious life in the Pacific Northwest, and would remain so until traditional practices began revitalizing in the late twentieth century.

Beginning in the 1950s, indigenous communities around Puget Sound began advocating for their treaty fishing rights. The treaties authored by Isaac Stevens had guaranteed tribal people the rights to fish in “usual and accustomed places.” When faced with state-sponsored suppression of these rights, tribal people continued to fish, despite being subjected to arrest and abuse. In the 1960s and 1970s, tribal communities participated in well-publicized “fish-ins,” their arrests broadcast in local and national media. In 1974, Judge George Boldt ruled in the famous “Boldt Decision” that the tribes indeed had a right to half the fish harvest, the right to fish in their usual and accustomed places, and that they had a right and responsibility to co-manage the fisheries with the State of Washington. Tribal communities in western Washington formed the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and continue to work to monitor, regulate, and restore fisheries. Tribes have invested enormous resources in habitat restoration and fish hatcheries, and they have revitalized ceremonies and spiritual traditions associated with fisheries, including the First Salmon Ceremony.

By the mid to late nineteenth century, many Southern Coast Salish people were engaged in the settler economy. Men served as labor on Euromerican hop farms, in lumber mills and fish canneries, and worked as fishers, loggers, and laborers. Native women were employed in canneries and as farm workers, domestic servants, child-care providers, cooks, and laundresses (Harmon 1998). Coast Salish people integrated seasonal work into their traditional lifestyles, often maintaining subsistence practices and ceremonial commitments while also participating in such wage labor.

Throughout the twentieth century, communities lived and worked both on reservations and off, with many attending residential boarding schools such as the Chemawa Indian School in Oregon. Federal policies sought to remove native children from their communities, placing them in residential boarding schools where they were taught to abandon their cultures and languages, and to adopt the speech, dress, and modes of settler culture. Boarding schools were rife with abuse, and children suffered severely by being removed from their families. After leaving such schools, many lived and worked away from the reservations, even as they maintained ties to their communities and extended families on the reservations. Military service was an important part of life for many individuals, and drew many away from reservation homes.

A broader national political movement for indigenous rights in the 1970s led to a series of legislative acts that moved toward the restoration of political and cultural sovereignty for native people. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978) established native people’s rights to practice their spiritual traditions. The American Indian Child Welfare Act (1978) ended policies of removing native children from their families and communities. And the American Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act laid the groundwork for tribes to manage their own social services, education, and healthcare. Southern Coast Salish tribal communities were among the first in the nation to move to take control of their healthcare. Led by the Puyallup nation, tribes established their own health and wellness centers, approaching healthcare in a holistic and culturally-informed manner (Crawford O’Brien 2013).

The earliest contact with non-native communities likely occurred in 1792, when George Vancouver explored Puget Sound and Hood Canal. (Vancouver 1798; Menzies 1923; Anderson 1939), but infectious disease predated the arrival of Vancouver. Boyd (1999) estimates the arrival of smallpox as early as the 1770s. Relatively little contact occurred between 1792 and 1824, when the Hudson’s Bay company sent an expeditionary party to the region, and later established Fort Nisqually in 1833 (Tolmie 1963). The trading post brought new material goods and religious ideas, both from Euromerican settlers and from indigenous communities elsewhere in North America.

The reservation era also brought religious changes. Reservations provided more opportunities for missionaries to work among native people, while providing government agents the means of suppressing indigenous religions. In 1858 Father Casimir Chirouse founded a school and mission on the Tulalip reservation. In 1869, as part of the post-civil war Peace Policy, President Grant assigned Roman Catholics to govern the Swinomish, Tulalip, Suquamish, and Muckleshoot reservations; the Squaxin Island and Skokomish reservations were assigned Congregationalist missionaries. The Squaxin, Puyallup, and Skokomish communities were governed by Indian Agent Edwin Eells and his missionary brother Myron.

After a century of cultural suppression by the government, missionaries, and the broader Euromerican society, much of Southern Coast Salish culture had gone underground. While traditions survived, they were practiced in secret by relatively few families. But indigenous cultures in the region saw a remarkable revival in the late twentieth century, which has continued apace in the twenty first century. One important reason for this were the political movements of the latter half of the twentieth century.

Within the context of such reforms indigenous cultural and spiritual traditions experienced a revival. Beginning in the 1980s, rituals and ceremonies that had gone underground were once again practiced. More and more people began participating. The first decades of the twenty-first century have been marked by a cultural flourishing. Tribes are investing heavily in language and cultural education programs for their youth. Many communities have restored ceremonial longhouses (also called smokehouses) and a resurgence of winter spirit dancing and winter ceremonials that began in the 1980s has continued apace (Bierwert 1999). Tribal Journey (also referred to as Canoe Journey) has become a hallmark of cultural life. Tribal communities from throughout the Northwest sponsor canoe families, who participate in this multi-week canoe journey, culminating in a week-long gathering at a host tribe. Evenings are marked by “protocol” wherein each community offers songs, dances, and orations. Indigenous language, canoe culture, arts, and spirituality are reaffirmed, celebrated, and passed on to future generations. In recent years, over a hundred canoes and canoe-families have participated in these annual events.

The first Catholic missions to the region occurred in 1839-40, led by Father Francis Blanchet and Father Modeste Demers. The fathers traveled through the region, teaching and offering last rites to individuals stricken by disease, using a trade language known as Chinook Jargon and a graphic timeline of the Christian story called the Catholic Ladder to communicate (White and St. Laurent 1997). The first Protestant missionary to the region was J.P. Richards at Fort Nisqually. None of these early missions appears to have met with much success.

American settlers began arriving in the region in 1845, and grew in numbers after 1846 when the Treaty of Washington established the region as a territory of the United States. Interest grew further after the 1850 Donation Land Act, which invited settlers to establish homesteads in the region.

In the pre-colonial era, villages were located along the waterways of Puget Sound and Hood Canal, and the tributaries that fed into those bodies of water. These waterways were both their highways and their source of food. The waters provided an abundance of resources, while the land provided a wealth of plants and animals that provided medicines, foods, clothing, shelter, and materials for artistic and spiritual expression. Villages varied in size from a single large dwelling to dozens of dwellings.

Communities gathered at winter villages each year. One’s primary identity stemmed from the location of one’s winter village. Communities often broke up in spring, as smaller groups visited family hunting, gathering, and fishing sites throughout the region. They returned to their winter villages in the late fall.

Villages consisted of a central longhouse, and other smaller surrounding habitations. Gabled-roof, cedar plank longhouses on Puget Sound were recorded to be as large as 100-300 feet in length, 20-40 feet in depth, and perhaps 30 feet in height. These enormous structures grew as the extended family grew, adding on to accommodate the growing community.

Winter was a time of spirituality, ceremony, community, storytelling, and art production, as people gathered together in the longhouse. Within the longhouse, several hearths would be located down the center, and might be six feet in diameter. Split cedar beams formed the walls, ceilings, and sometimes floors. Floors were excavated below ground level, particularly for the hearths, and raised benches around the perimeter served as spaces for seating, sleeping, and storage, while wooden partitions and woven screens provided privacy for nuclear families. Longhouses might accommodate anywhere from three to twenty nuclear families, depending on the size of the community, each with their own hearth. Family crests and images representing family spirit powers would be carved on support beams and house posts, and the crests of the head family would likely be displayed outside the home.

With the establishment of reservation communities and federally-funded housing, families adopted housing consistent with the rest of northern North America. However, communities continue to maintain ceremonial longhouses and community centers designed to mirror the longhouses of their ancestors. The Puyallup tribe, for instance, designed a low-income housing project that was intentionally modeled after a traditional longhouse: while each nuclear family has its own private accommodations, these apartments open onto a shared common area with barbecues and space to gather.

In pre-colonial times, the Southern Coast Salish had a subsistence economy that relied heavily upon fishing, gathering, and hunting. Fishing was dominated by five species of salmon, but also included steelhead, sturgeon, herring, and eulachon. In the sea, fishers used seins and gill nets. In rivers they relied on weirs, traps, trawl nets, dip nets, gaff hooks, and harpoons. Shellfish were a central part of the diet as well. Shellfish and fishing grounds were maintained and regulated by extended families who owned these sites, and negotiated their use with visitors. Throughout the colonial era, along with farming, fishing and shellfish gathering continued to be a vital part of native economies. For much of the twentieth century, subsistence fishing and gathering continued to feed families, while working in fishing, canning, and shellfish industries provided needed wage income. Since the late twentieth century, tribes have worked to revitalize tribally-owned fishing and shellfish companies, even as they have struggled with the impacts of climate change and dwindling resources due to pollution, and over-harvesting by non-native commercial fishers.

Traditionally, land mammals also formed an important part of the economy. Large land mammals such as black tail deer, elk and bear, as well as small game such as raccoons, rabbits, beavers and otters, provided pelts and food. The Southern Coast Salish trapped and hunted over twenty species of waterfowl. Plants were also incredibly important. Early growth like young nettles, horsetail fern, the first growth of cane berries, and fiddlehead ferns provided much needed nutrition in the spring. The summer provided a wealth of different berries including salmonberry, thimbleberry, blackcap, native blackberry, serviceberry, elderberry, numerous varieties of huckleberry, Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium), and salal (Gaultheria shallon. Native tubers such as camas (Camassia spp.) and wapato (Sagittaria cuneate E. Sheldon) were an important staple as well. A wealth of plants provided food, medicine, and spiritual nourishment.

Access to and viability of traditional foods has been compromised by privatization of land, destruction of habitat, development, pollution, and climate change. Yet Southern Coast Salish tribes have joined national and international movements toward promoting indigenous food sovereignty. This movement includes tribal support for community gardens, classes that instruct tribal members in harvesting and cooking traditional foods, and investment in habitat protection and restoration.

Contemporary tribal economies are varied, with individuals working in industries and professions throughout the Puget Sound region. Reservation economies depend heavily on fishing, shellfish farming, tourism, and casino incomes—particularly for those fortunate enough to have a larger casino, and to be near an urban center.

The arts are both functional and meaningful, expressive of a close engagement with the natural and spiritual world. Consider a carved bowl resembling a beaver: the bowl is functional, but also represents the artists’ relationship with the beaver, and with the cedar that provided the wood; it furthermore represents the stories and traditions associated with both beaver and cedar, providing ethical teachings as well as a tangible reminder of a spiritual relationship. Carvers and woodworkers produce household items such as bowls, combs, utensils, tools, and weapons. Carvers craft house posts, masks, and canoes. Spirit powers or family emblems may be represented on such objects, or they may evoke a traditional story. Baskets are woven from cattail, corn husk and cedar, among other media, and are used for storage, transportation and the beautification of one’s home. Woven cattail mats were traditionally used to construct shelters, partitions, and flooring. Cordage is made from nettle and cattail fiber. Cedar bark hats, clothing, and other adornment remain highly valued, and are a sign of artistic achievement and social standing. The Coast Salish are also known for their traditional weaving techniques, using mountain goat wool (and, later, sheep’s wool) to craft beautiful blankets, shawls, and clothing. Spindles are carved to represent powerful spiritual persons. Weaving was done on large standing looms. Basketry and traditional weaving techniques were revitalized in the late twentieth century with the help of such important cultural leaders as Bruce Miller (Skokomish), Vi Hilbert (Skagit), and Hazel Peet (Chehalis, i.e. Southwestern Coast Salish) (Collins 2000/2001).

Trade was an important part of pre-colonial life. While trade routes centered on waterways, extended kinship networks facilitated frequent travel throughout western Washington and occasional travel over the Cascade Range to trade with Interior Salish relatives. Dentalia shells were used as currency; bartering for goods was frequent. Frequently traded items included dried fish and shellfish, furs, carvings, dried berries, medicines, and camas bulbs (Camassia spp.).

While communities often divided labor along gendered lines, such demarcations were fluid and not strictly policed. Men were more often carvers, hunters, fishers, and warriors. Women were more often responsible for the cultivation, pruning, thinning, and harvesting of plant foods and medicines, and were more often weavers of baskets and wool. Women and men both piloted canoes, and both participated in the intensive work during fishing season. While men were typically responsible for gathering and chopping firewood, building homes, and constructing canoes, women maintained hearth and home, including transporting household goods. However, such roles were not strict and, when the need arose, each gender would participate in the work of the other. Today both men and women participate in weaving, carving, and piloting canoes.

Particular fishing, harvesting, gathering and hunting territories were considered the property of particular extended families. Members of these extended families were free to use these areas; family elders maintained them and oversaw their use to ensure their sustained well-being. Individuals from outside of the extended kinship network were expected to secure permission before gathering resources in that territory. Land and resource ownership thus required a knowledge of extended kinship networks, and a close engagement with those relationships.

The notion of private property was complex, and does not equate with Euromerican notions of property. For instance, property might include songs, dances, and stories—what might be referred to as intellectual property today. In a traditional sense, holding property did not simply mean owning something, but also being responsible to care for and maintain a relationship with a living thing. To “own” land is thus to be in reciprocal caring relationship with the land, and with the plant and animal “people” who lived there, including maintaining the songs, dances, and stories that had been given by those plants and animals.

Communities had a bilateral kinship structure: individuals reckoned their identity from both their mother’s and father’s line. In the absence of lineage-like kin groups, individuals sharing known ancestors acknowledged one another as kin.

Kinship terminology was what Lowie termed “lineal,” with bilateral reckoning of descent. However, lineal and collateral relatives were not distinguished beyond the first ascending and descending generation, and by the second generation terms were reciprocal and without gender distinction. Recognition of relative age, shared residence, and/or the “closeness” of individual relationships added layers of complexity.

As most villages consisted of a single longhouse, house and village exogamy were usually equivalent. Individuals were encouraged or required to marry outside of their villages, expanding and strengthening kinship ties with other communities throughout the region. Courtship could take place, although most marriages were arranged by the families. The union was sealed by the groom’s family ceremoniously delivering a bride price to the bride’s family, which was subsequently reciprocally and often equivalently returned by the bride’s family. Communities were ambilocal—some couples lived with the groom’s family, others with the bride’s. The Skokomish were recorded to be patrilocal, the Duwamish to be matrilocal, while in other communities such arrangements were determined as part of the betrothal negotiations (Elmendorf 1960; Waterman 1920; Collins 1974). Divorce could be difficult for wealthy families. Both the levirate and sororate were practiced. Polygyny occurred, mainly among the wealthy upper class.

The most important domestic unit was and is the extended family. Traditionally, this might include relatives up to six or seven degrees removed. Today, it likely includes one’s nuclear family and the extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins twice removed, and the siblings of one’s grandparents. Extended families support and care for one another, often with little differentiation being made between immediate and distant cousins. Relatedness is important, and requires reciprocity, care, and mutual support.

Inheritance includes the passing on of names, cultural goods, and material wealth. Names are particularly important in this regard, as they can be passed along to future generations. Receiving the name of an ancestor carries with it great responsibility. As a carrier of the name, one has a responsibility to uphold—even to burnish—its reputation before passing it along to future generations. Songs, dances, and stories also can be passed on or gifted to the next generation, and performers are careful to acknowledge the source of such valuable gifts. Wealth traditionally was held in the form of dentalia and clamshell disk beads, woven wool blankets, fur robes, pelts, canoes, and carvings. Such items remain valuable markers of cultural wealth.

Within traditional culture, restrictions of diet and activities were placed upon expectant parents. Infants were cared for by the immediate family, and in pre-colonial communities infants’ heads were shaped to elongate the skull, a marker of high class status. Children were kept on a cradle board until they began to walk. As they grew older, both boys and girls were invited to spend longer and longer periods of time in isolation in the woods, until they began to seriously undertake vision quests as adolescents. At menarche, young women were secluded for varying periods of time, during which they underwent instruction in the arts and responsibilities of women. When their seclusion came to an end, the community would celebrate with a feast and giveaway. Menstruating women continue to join other women in monthly seclusion, enjoying a respite from work. Young men’s coming of age might be marked by a first hunt, the receiving of a name, or initiation into a religious society. Such events were marked by a giveaway.

Traditionally, the three most important elements of social organization were family, household, and village. Within the longhouse, each nuclear family was composed of a couple and their children, and had its own hearth, adjacent to other members of their extended household. Villages were, in turn, most closely affiliated with other villages along the same watershed. Intermarriage and kinship networks served to further cement ties and affiliations, creating a complex web of relations that bound the Puget Sound and Hood Canal region together.

Society was divided between the upper class, freemen, and slaves. Upper class people came from good families, and so had the right to valuable resource gathering areas. They had been trained in how to procure wealth, and were educated in ceremonial and ritual knowledge. They inherited songs, dances, regalia, and other cultural patrimony. Lower class free people had little or no family, and little access to knowledge, resources, or inherited wealth. In contrast to cultures farther north in British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, which were more stratified, “high class” individuals tended to outnumber lower class individuals in Southern Coast Salish society. Slaves were captives of war and their descendants, held as property and the responsibility of their owners.

Each winter village was governed by a head family, and the male leader of that family. Head families were the wealthiest ones and were responsible for ensuring the safety and wellbeing of their people. Although often passed to son or younger brother, such leadership roles were not strictly hereditary. Governance primarily occurred at the village level, with alliances negotiated during winter ceremonials and summer gatherings. Marriage and affiliation through spiritual societies provided a political network that bound the region together, and created structures for negotiation.

After the 1934 American Indian Reorganization Act, tribal governance shifted to a federally imposed model of democratically elected tribal councils, directed by a tribal chairperson. Tribal representatives also sit on regional boards such as the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, and national entities such as the National Congress of American Indians.

Traditionally, regulation of behavior happened at the local level. Elders within the family and village would intervene to correct wayward behavior. If instability was believed to have a spiritual source or spiritual implications, behavioral correction might occur within the ceremonial longhouse. Storytelling provided an important means of correcting behavior as well. Stories could be directed toward particular individuals without identifying them by name, providing guidance and admonition in a subtle, non-shaming way. In recent times, regulating behavior falls to family elders, religious leaders, the tribal council, and a complex jurisdictional negotiation between tribal, city, county, and state police.

Southern Coast Salish warfare traditions were primarily defensive, as they lived in good relations with their extended Coast Salish kin. Professional warriors defended villages against potential invaders, and occasionally staged raids against far-flung communities to whom they were not related. Inter-village conflict might be settled by spiritual leaders, who sought to negotiate conflicts within the community. Jealousy, anger, or resentment could lead to illness or injury, and spiritual leaders conducted rituals to restore fractured relationships, facilitate the balance of power, and provide protection from animosity.

Origin stories tell of a Creator or Transformer who set the world in order, assigning tasks to all the First People. Some of these First People were assigned to be plants and given responsibilities for knowledge, healing, memory, or holding the earth together. Other First People were given the tasks of being various land animals, fish, or birds. Yet others were turned into features of the landscape such as mountains, hills, or rock formations. The landscape was imbued with life, and filled with living beings who had personhood, agency, awareness, and knowledge. Human beings were the last creatures to be made. Seeing they were in need, plant and animal people volunteered to be food, clothing, and medicine for these new creatures. In return, the human beings were expected to demonstrate gratitude, respect, and care, and to follow certain standards of ethical behavior. All beings thus were originally people, and all share a common spirit. Everything came from the Creator, and depends upon the Creator’s spirit for life.

Religious life centers on securing and maintaining relationships with the powerful spiritual beings that animate the natural world. Beginning at a young age, individuals will spend time alone in in the natural world seeking a vision. Ideally, one has a spiritual encounter during adolescence. Later, when an individual experiences something known as “spirit sickness” it is an indication that it is time to be initiated into the winter spirit dance tradition. Within a ceremonial longhouse/smokehouse, initiates are invited to sing the song they received from their spirit power. Spirit powers provide guidance, vocational gifts, healing, and empowerment throughout one’s life. Relationships with plant and animal people happen in other, more mundane ways as well. It is a way of life, learning to listen to plant and animal people. Such learning can happen through prayer, meditation, plant cultivation, weaving, carving, canoeing, hiking, hunting or otherwise learning the art of careful observation.

Religious leaders guide the initiation of new dancers in winter ceremonials, and supervise these ceremonials as a whole. They provide guidance and lessons to young people, and run important events like naming ceremonies and first foods ceremonies. Individuals gifted with healing may work with plants, prayers, visions, or other ceremonies to restore people to wellness. There is not a formal structure or guild of religious practitioners; they arise through their individual gifts, are trained by elders over many years, and are recognized as leaders by their communities. With the outlawing of indigenous religions in the late nineteenth century, many ceremonial leaders and healing practitioners were forced to give up their work or face imprisonment. Others found within the new Indian Shaker Church a space where they could continue to guide and care for their communities, in a form that fit the colonial context.

First foods ceremonies—honoring roots, berries, game, and fish, and celebrating humanity’s relationship with these important beings—are a vital part of religious life. After regaining their treaty fishing rights in the late twentieth century, Southern Coast Salish people revitalized their First Salmon ceremonies. During such ceremonies, the first fish is brought to shore and honored as a visiting dignitary. It is ritually filleted, and shared with the community as part of a feast. Each person present is given at least a bite of this important fish. All the bones from the first salmon are collected, and ceremonially returned to the water. Stories teach that the people are related to the salmon through ancient kinship bonds. By treating the salmon with respect and returning its bones to the water, they are ensuring the fish will be reborn and return the next year. And, by enforcing protocols that allow for a certain number of days to pass by before the first fish is caught, such ritual restrictions ensure that enough fish will make it upstream to spawn.

Traditionally, winter ceremonials were held for five days and nights, with individuals dancing or singing their spirit songs from dusk to dawn. Amoss (1978) and Bierwert (1999) note the revival of these traditions among the Coast Salish. The night-long event is concluded with a large breakfast.

Healing ceremonies are a key part of ceremonial life. Healing is at the heart of Indian Shaker Church ceremonies, in which individuals are prayed over and those spiritual elements causing disease or distress are removed. Other, private healing ceremonies might include retrieval of the part of a person’s soul that has wandered off and gotten lost. There also was a large soul-retrieval ceremony, sometimes referred to as the spirit canoe ceremony, held in the longhouse with the support of extended family. In it, a ceremonial practitioner and their assistants would spiritually journey to the land of the dead, paddling a symbolic canoe and overcoming great obstacles to retrieve the patient’s lost soul (Miller 1999). Other ceremonies include the use of cedar power boards to guide the spiritual practitioner in their search for answers or lost objects.

Artistic expressions include song, dance, storytelling, oratory, and visual arts. Traditionally, visual arts were expressed in carving (house posts, masks, canoes, paddles, spindle whorls, household utensils and tools), basketry (baskets, hats, clothing and other adornment), and weaving (blankets, clothing). Distinct from more commonly-known forms of indigenous art found on the northern Northwest Coast, Southern Coast Salish styles are less stylized and do not employ the formline design principle common in British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. Instead, Southern Coast Salish art tends toward the abstract and individualized. It is distinguished by its use of the circle, crescent, and trigon (triangle with inward-curving sides). Puyallup artist Qwalsius –Shaun Peterson describes these as key design elements, with the circle serving as the center, and other elements radiating outward.

In the contemporary era, most of the greatest threats to well-being are the effect of colonialism. Loss of access to lands, traditional lifestyles and traditional foods have led to high rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The break-up of communities and families due to colonial policies such the removal of children to boarding schools and other forms of systematic racism have led to high rates of depression, addiction, and suicide. Tribal health care professionals agree that a standard biomedical approach is not sufficient to restore indigenous people to wellness. Reclaiming traditional foods, lifestyles, and spiritual relationships with the plant, animal, and spiritual worlds are vital tools in combatting these threats to well-being. Tribal wellness centers work to integrate traditional teachings and practices into their care, promoting healing for individuals, families, and communities, and restoring relationships between the people, their ancestors, and their land.

Healing traditions relied heavily on a complex pharmacopeia of medicinal plants. This knowledge of plants was combined with ritual formulae, prayers, and practices that were designed not just to regulate the ingestion of a particular medicine, but to cultivate a relationship between the human being and the plant itself. As they were living, sentient beings, the spirit of the plant was believed to be an important part of its efficaciousness. Illness might also be the result of broken relationships. A vengeful individual could send a disease-causing spirit power against someone else. In that case, a healing practitioner would remove the disease-causing object using song, prayer, and ritual. In other cases, illness might be the result of soul loss. Soul loss could be caused by living an imbalanced life, by violence, trauma, or grief, or through contact with the dead. In such instances, a religious practitioner would journey in spirit to retrieve the lost soul and return it to the individual; failure to do so could be lethal. Other spiritual illnesses might occur through neglecting or offending one’s spirit powers. Restoring these relationships might require corrections in lifestyle and engagement in ceremony.

Upon death, families host a wake. Gifts are brought for the deceased and their family, and the family will give away many of the deceased’s possessions. Traditionally the body was washed and prepared for burial by professional undertakers, and then placed into a canoe supported on a frame, with an inverted canoe covering it. With colonialism, in-ground internment became the norm. Cemeteries are honored in communities, carefully tended, and often visited by family.

An important part of religious life is caring for the dead. In one such ceremony, traditional foods are prepared, put on paper plates, and ritually burned on an open fire. Attendees may be asked to turn their backs until all the food has been burned, or consumed by the dead. Such practices reflect an important teaching: that the ancestors remain present, watching over and participating in the lives of their descendants.

Beliefs about the soul and afterlife vary. Many have adopted a Christian perspective, while others believe that the individual is comprised of multiple aspects of the self, sometimes referred to as the breath, shadow and soul. The breath may live only as long as the body and will depart with life. The shadow may remain upon the earth as a palpable presence, looking after one’s descendants and remaining tied to those places that were important to them. The soul departs to the land of the dead, where it might remain or from which it might return and be reincarnated in one’s descendants.

The culture summary was written by Suzanne Crawford O’Brien in January, 2019. Leon G. Doyon added census figures, supplemented the sections “Kin Groups and Decent” and “Marriage,” and added the section “Kinship Terminology” in February, 2022.

Amoss, Pamela (1978). Coast Salish Spirit Dancing: The Survival of an Ancestral Religion. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

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