Coast Salish people & languages

The term “Coast Salish” refers to a language family, including two dozen distinct languages and many dialects, and is used to indicate the cultural group of indigenous peoples who speak or spoke these languages.

The Coast Salish-speaking peoples have lived in what is present-day western Washington and southwestern British Columbia for more than 10,000 years. Their geographic territory includes the lands bordering what is known as the Salish Sea—Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, Gulf Islands, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Strait of Georgia—as well as the Pacific coast of Washington and northern Oregon.

• View maps of the many territories of the Coast Salish

• Learn more about the history of the Coast Salish people

• Understanding tribal treaty rights and individual treaties in Western Washington

• Find the native lands that you live on at Native Land Digital

Origins and usage of the term “Salish Sea”

Salish Sea describes the integrated inland sea located in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. state of Washington. It includes the so-called Strait of Georgia, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound, plus an intricate network of connecting channels and adjoining waterways. The names of these three main bodies of water carry a colonial legacy:

• Puget Sound: named in 1792 by George Vancouver, a British Royal Navy officer, for Peter Puget, a lieutenant who accompanied him on the Vancouver Expedition; originally it described only the waters south of the Tacoma Narrows.

• The Strait of Juan de Fuca: named in 1787 by the maritime fur trader Charles William Barkley, for Juan de Fuca, the Greek navigator for a Spanish expedition in 1592 to seek the fabled Strait of Anián which is a semi-mythical strait that is part of the Northwest Passage conquest project.

• The Strait of Georgia: named “in honor” of King George III in 1792 by Captain George Vancouver, an English “explorer.”

The name “Salish Sea” was proposed in 1989 by Bert Webber, a white, Canadian-born professor of geography and environmental social studies from Huxley College (Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA), in response to the plans to bring crude oil from Alaska’s arctic shores into Washington State’s inland marine waters for refining in the mid-1970s. There was much (well-deserved) concern over oil spills, which of course do not recognize national borders.

At the time, there was no encompassing name for this interconnected inland sea that spanned coasts in the northwestern US and southwestern Canada, so he proposed the name “Salish Sea” to help people envision one body of water and one ecosystem. The Salish Sea Institute was opened in 2019. Webber’s intention was to reflect the entire cross-border ecosystem and to honor the indigenous people who were the first to live in the region, and who live here still. Both Washington State and British Columbia voted to officially recognize the name “Salish Sea” in late 2009.

And like all colonial overlays, it’s complicated. Some say that the name is appropriation or even a complete misnomer. David Buerge, a white Seattle-based historian of the Duwamish people who reside in the area known as Seattle, says that it is a “white” term (“Why We Should Stop Calling it the Salish Sea”).

However, other tribes and peoples embrace the name, like the Samish tribe (in what is known as Washington State), the three W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations (Tsartlip, Tseycum, and Tsawout, in what is known as British Columbia), and Stz'uminus elder George Harris, who brought the idea of a name change to British Columbia in 2008. The Coast Salish Gathering, a yearly gathering for tribes and nations in the region to find common ground on environmental and natural resources issues and projects, has been using the term “Salish Sea” since 2007 and celebrated the official government recognition of the Salish Sea in 2010.

We recognize the complexity of using the name “Salish Sea” and are interested in continuing the conversation.