Economic Life

In the period before contact both Coastal and Interior Salish peoples depended heavily on the huge salmon runs. However, the economy was not limited to this. For the Interior peoples, winter villages were concentrated along the salmon-bearing Fraser and Thompson rivers and other waterways, but the economy was based on a pattern of seasonal movement. People moved in small groups from spring to fall and joined with others to form larger aggregations in the winter, conducting ceremonial activities from November through February. By March, stored foods were used up and resources near the winter home were sought, including trout and small game. Canyons provided good locations for net- and spear-salmon fishing, beginning in the spring. Fish were wind-dried, smoked, eaten fresh, and traded. Women processed the fish and also gathered various edible roots, green shoots, and berries, contributing over half of the total food energy consumed by southern Plateau peoples. In June, people carried reed mats to summer camps at progressively higher elevations to harvest roots for three months. Roots were dried or baked for ease of transport back to the winter village. In July and August, fish runs drew many to the rivers. In late summer, many moved again to the mountains for fruit harvests. Most groups exploited a large area, overlapping with other Plateau peoples. Large-scale trading networks further helped reduce the risk of food supply failure.

Coastal Salish peoples relied on salmon, roots, berries, birds, and small land mammals, but they also harvested sea mammals and shellfish. There was less risk of starvation resulting from poor harvests, and coastal peoples organized economic activities somewhat differently than the interior peoples. Most notably, the key resource areas were not open to use by non-kin, and surpluses were stored for status-enhancing distribution. During the winter, people congregated in villages located along waterways to carry out ceremonial activities; in the main, they relied on stored supplies, although shellfish were gathered. Large and small groups moved seasonally to the resource, and, in the spring, sea- and land mammal-hunting and fishing took precedence. In late summer and through the fall, plant foods were harvested and salmon fishing continued. Salmon were harvested with various technologies, including weirs, spears, nets, and artificial reefs. Members of Coast Salish communities located near the foothills hunted deer and elk. Great reliance was placed on cedar, which was used for house construction, canoes, tools, clothes, mats, boxes, and carvings. In order to take advantage of localized differences in foods and in production (only those in some locations could produce canoes, for example), goods were exchanged via trade to non-kin, gifts to relations, and ceremonial potlatches.

There were dramatic changes to the Salish people’s economic practices following contact with whites. Initially, fur trading was the main interest of non-natives, and some natives benefited from their access to new trade goods. However, with colonization after the gold rush of 1858 came displacement. The Coast Salish peoples of the lower Fraser River were affected the earliest. Women lost their gathering grounds to settler farms and families were displaced from prime fishing locations. In addition, fishing runs themselves were damaged through industrial harvesting, introduced by non-natives in the late nineteenth century, or through negligence. Accidents associated with the construction of a railroad line destroyed a massive fish run in the Fraser Canyon in 1913. Lake Sumas, a major site for giant sturgeon and other fish, was drained in the 1920s to provide farmland for non-natives.

Salish peoples began trading with non-natives early in the nineteenth century but shifted into wage labouring out of necessity as the era of fur trapping ended, seeking work as loggers, mill-hands, and, briefly, coal miners and sailors. Whole communities became engaged in seasonal fish harvesting and canning, the men working as fishers in small boats, the women in fish-processing plants. Starting in the late nineteenth century, families also worked as hop and berry pickers. There was a decline in economic opportunity in the first half of the twentieth century, as Salish peoples were displaced from the labour force by new immigrants in a largely racially segregated economy. Chinese, for example, were brought in for railroad construction, and Japanese and Scandinavians entered the fishery. As costs of doing business rose, native people found themselves unable to obtain investment capital to buy expensive fishing boats or to compete in emerging agribusiness, and they were also pushed out of the many entrepreneurial activities they had begun at the end of the nineteenth century. Henceforth, natives were concentrated in casual, unskilled, and seasonal jobs.

The continuation of subsistence activities may have reduced the impact of the Great Depression of the 1930s for some natives. However, underemployment, unemployment, and poverty remain economic realities. In the 1960s, federal funding provided for band employment for such positions as clerks, managers, and welfare administrators, positions largely held by women. Today, there are small-scale efforts at promoting tourism, and some bands have leased lands for residential and recreation uses. Some still practise salmon fishing in the Fraser and other rivers, and the Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy of the federal government has, since 1993, permitted a small native commercial salmon harvest. Some native fishers hold regular commercial licences, but by the 1990s salmon fisheries – and fishers’ income – were under severe decline.