Archaeology demonstrates sustainable Ancestral Coast Salish salmon stewardship over thousands of years pre-contact

Tsleil-Waututh Nation is an ancestral Coast Salish community that has called the Inlet home since time immemorial. This research assesses the continuity and sustainability of the salmon fishery at təmtəmíxʷtən, an ancestral Tsleil-Waututh settlement in the Inlet, over thousands of years before European contact (1792 CE).

We apply Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) analysis to 245 archaeological salmon vertebrae to identify the species that were harvested by the Tsleil-Waututh community that lived at təmtəmíxʷtən. The results demonstrate that Tsleil-Waututh communities consistently and preferentially fished for chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) over the period of almost 3,000 years. The consistent abundance indicates a sustainable chum salmon fishery over that time and a strong salmon-to-people relationship through generations.