variants: Salǽˑtʃʼɪtʃʽ, Sai-lĕtc-́ĭc qûn-nĕ, and Sii-lee-ch'ish) Their eastern neighbors the Central Kalapuya tribes called them Tsä Shnádsh amím.

In 1856 following the Rogue River Wars in southern Oregon, people from among more than 27 Native Tribes and Bands, speaking 10 distinct languages: Alsea/Yaquina, chinuk wawa (also known as Chinook Jargon), Coos, Kalapuya, Molala, Shasta, Siuslaw/Lower Umpqua, Takelma, Tillamook, and a broad group of Athapascans speaking groups of SW Oregon, including Upper Umpqua, Coquille, Tututni, Chetco, Tolowa, Galice and Applegate River peoples who by treaty agreements and force were removed by the United States to the Coast Indian Reservation, later known as the Siletz Reservation.

Over generations the Siletz people have faced brutal federal policies which resulted their 1.1 million acre reservation being illegally taken from them.

In cooperation with the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, the tribe produced a "talking dictionary" of Siletz Dee-ni in 2007 to aid in preservation and teaching.

The tribe was considered the southernmost group of the larger Coast Salish culture,[3] which was centered near the Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound in what are now British Columbia, Canada, and Washington, United States.

[3] What is now known as the Siletz Dee-ni language was restricted historically to speakers in "a small area on the central Oregon coast.

Their work is "a comprehensive attempt to include the similarities and the differences of the known dialects of the Southwest Oregon / Northwestern California Athabaskan Language.