Coast Salish Synthesis

    Though the colonial period has long since passed, at least in North America, its effects linger to this day.  “Both British and American colonialism required categorizing, dividing, and confining Aboriginal people” (Marker 757).  This meant that entire communities had to be relocated or otherwise adapted, despite having resided on the same land for hundreds of years.  Most civilizations did not survive this process, as the Trail of Tears and fragmented Indian reservations demonstrated in the United States, but the Coast Salish people of British Columbia and Washington State were faced with a unique situation altogether.  Their ancestral lands, at least since the establishment of that portion of the border in 1846, lay in both the United States and Canada.  This meant that traveling across the community required a border crossing.  Luckily, the right of Native Americans to freely cross the US/Canada border was guaranteed in the 1794 Jay Treaty (Nickels par. 3).
    The general plan for the assimilation of Native Americans was to “isolate children in institutions and punish any expression of their home culture while reformatting their cognitive maps emphasising the superiority of the empire” (Marker 759); the Coast Salish language and cultural dances had to be kept alive in secret (Marker 761).  Eventually, Natives were allowed into traditional public schools, where they were greeted with racism stemming from political and cultural conflicts, such as disputes over fishing rights in the waters of the Puget Sound.  The Coast Salish people have historically had rights to half of the salmon by the Point Elliot Treaty of 1855; rights which Canadians wished to possess (Marker 765).  To escape this racism, many Coast Salish families embraced the once-detested boarding school system and sent their children to live among other members of their culture.

Marker, Michael. "Indigenous Resistance and Racist Schooling on the Borders of Empires: Coast Salish Cultural Survival." Paedagogica Historica 45.6 (2009): 757-72. Print.

Nickels, Bryan. "Native American Free Passage Rights under the 1794 Jay Treaty: Survival under United States Statutory Law and Canadian Common Law." BC.edu. Boston College, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2012. <http://www.bc.edu/dam/files/schools/law/lawreviews/journals/bciclr/24_2/04_TXT.htm>.