Salish peoples
ethno-linguistic group of the Pacific Northwest of the US and SW Canada
The Salish peoples is a grouping defined by linguists of the Indigenous peoples who speak or historically spoke the Salishan languages.
These people and languages are split into three distinct branches:
Nuxalk
Coast Salish peoples
Interior Salish peoples
The term "Salish" originated in the modern era as an exonym created for linguistic research. Salish is an anglicization of Séliš, the endonym 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.
The language family may have originated in the Fraser River delta, near present-day Vancouver, British Columbia.
Nuxalk
The Nuxalk speak the Nuxalk language and are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. They primarily live in Bella Coola area, Central Coast region of British Columbia in Canada.
Coast Salish
Coast Salish peoples speak Coast Salish languages and are Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. They primarily live on the west coasts of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon.
Interior Salish
Interior Salish peoples speak Interior Salish languages and are Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Salish peoples” is ethno-linguistic group of the Pacific Northwest of the US and SW Canada. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Salish, peoples and ethno-linguistic, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1825812. The Library of Congress control number is sh85116802. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Salish peoples” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.