The science and the tradition converge on the same truth, told in different languages.

The Living Communities of the Coast

The Tlingit, the Haida, the Tsimshian, and the other Indigenous nations of the Southeast Alaskan and British Columbia coast are not simply communities with historical claims to an ancient past.

They are living peoples with active cultural traditions, contemporary governance structures, ongoing relationships with the lands and waters of their ancestral territories, and specific interests in how their ancestral history is understood and communicated.

The Tlingit people are organized through a complex clan system in which individuals belong to one of two moieties — the Raven and the Eagle — and to specific clans within those moieties.