Like most Northwest Coast indigenous peoples, the Nooksack long occupied a watershed area where they relied on fishing, hunting, and clamming, as well as gathering root vegetables and berries, and processing these for sustenance.

Their territory extended from the mountains to the coast of present-day northwest Washington state in the watershed of the Nooksack River, and into British Columbia, Canada.

European exploration and colonization of the Pacific Northwest resulted in social disruption, high death rates from infectious disease, and their losing access to much of their historic territory.

[3] Because the Nooksack had not been granted reservation land by the U.S. government in the 19th century, they were not recognized as a tribe at the time by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In the 1930s the Nooksack tribe voted to accept the Wheeler-Howard Act and began working on a tribal constitution to establish an elected government under its model.

In this period many Nooksack and other Coastal Salish worked and lived away from Whatcom County, further south in the Puget Sound area where there were more jobs.

The tribe created a constitution conforming to the model of elected government as proposed under the Indian Reorganization Act.

His brother Rudy St. Germain was also enrolled and in 2012 was serving on the tribal council, as was their cousin Michelle Roberts, another George descendant.

Following rejection of St. Germain's application for his children, under the leadership of Chairman Bob Kelly, the tribe conducted a review of membership and descent across several families.

Kelly personally reviewed the confusing records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Everett, concluding the Annie George descendants were insufficiently documented.

Her daughters: Elizabeth (Libby), Emma and Louisa)[6] married Filipino migrant workers, and lived and worked in other areas of the southern Puget Sound for years.

Their descendants were accepted for enrollment as Nooksack members in the early 1980s under Section H of the constitution, about a decade after the tribe was federally recognized.

[7] The ancestral tribal members were considered one people until Canada and the United States established boundaries across former common land.

[5] Over time descendants of the three daughters' families, known as the Rabang, Rapada, and Narte-Gladstone, gained political power in the tribe.

[8] According to Kelly (and current chair Ross Cline Sr.), Annie George's descendants had been mistakenly enrolled in the 1980s under Section H of the constitution.

Born and raised in Port Angeles, Washington, he became an attorney and set up his own practice in Seattle, specializing in Native American issues.

[7] A new 'supreme court' was created by the tribal council with Kelly as chief justice, an action that was invalidated by the federal government in 2019 as it went against the Nooksack constitution.

[10][14] The tribe lost federal funding in 2017 because the Bureau of Indian Affairs said it had acted improperly by trying to disenroll the 306 and postponing an important election related to this controversy.

[14] The elections resulted in further legal challenges after allegations of fraud and irregularities surfaced, as Kelly supporters were returned to office.

[14][15][16] In 2018 the newly elected tribal council, with a majority of Kelly supporters, voted to proceed with disenrolling the George descendants.

[9] Galanda, who continues to dispute the legality of the disenrollment of the 306, has suggested that the tribe violated due process in proposing eviction.

They initiated an investigation in fall 2021 related to civil rights issues and accounting for payments from tenants to the tribe for this housing.

[9] In December 2021, the Nooksack 306 through Galanda appealed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "seeking to have that organization intervene, review the situation and ask the Biden administration to immediately take steps to halt the evictions.

[17] As of the 2000 census, the Nooksack Indian Reservation, at 48°53′03″N 122°20′54″W / 48.88417°N 122.34833°W / 48.88417; -122.34833 in Whatcom County, had a resident population of 547 persons living on 2,720 acres (11 km2)) of land.

Galloway's book Dictionary of Upriver Halkomelem (2009) covers a language that was in the same region but distinct from that earlier spoken by the Nooksack people.