In spite of this, there are ongoing efforts to keep the languages alive through revitalization programs planned and conducted by various tribal organisations.

State programs such as the Canadian residential schools (where indigenous languages were prohibited) have been a major factor in reducing the number of fluent Salish speakers.

[4] In a move to self-identify and push back against the effects of the Indian Termination policy, namely assimilation, in 2016 the tribe chose to change their name from the anglicized "Salish-Prend d'Oreille" to Séliš-Ql̓ispé.

The museum is supplemented with an oral tradition of story-telling that explains the significance of the pieces on display and shares the stories of the people who lived in the time before and during the European invasion.

This dispersal of people and culture into large community centers also tightened the inter-tribal networks that had come into existence after the first World War.

Coast Salish peoples kept flocks of woolly dogs, bred for their wool, to shear and spin the fibers into yarn.

The designs of Salish weavings commonly featured graphical patterns such as zig-zag, diamond shapes, squares, rectangles, V-shapes and chevrons.

Salish weaving continued to a lesser extent, but the weavers largely transitioned to using sheep's wool yarn brought to the area by traders, as it was less costly than keeping the salmon-eating woolly dogs.

[14] Plentiful in the Pacific Northwest, the Western Red Cedar was a vital resource in Coast Salish peoples' lives.

It wasn't until the twentieth century that the totem pole tradition was adopted by the northern Coast Salish peoples including the Cowichan, Comox, Pentlatch, Musqueam, and Lummi tribes.

[15][16][17][18]Salish peoples located in the Pacific Northwest and parts of Southern Alaska were known to build totem poles that were meant to symbolize a tribe member's spirit animal or family crest.