Jesintel: Living Wisdom from Coast Salish Elders

Between Seattle and Vancouver Island lies Coast Salish, a dynamic area of where multiple Indigenous nations meet, with distinct cultures and separate (but linguistically related) languages. This work, featuring interviews with 19 Coast Salish elders, identifies these nations’ “ethical reciprocal relationships” as a key to the “resilient” Coast Salish worldview. (In the title, jesintel means “to learn and grow together.”) As the interview subjects discuss topics like sovereignty, language revitalization, naming practices, canoe-racing, salmon, storytelling, and family values, their first-person narratives reflect the struggles and spirituality of Indigenous life in the Pacific Northwest and the inter-tribal relations that exist outside colonial jurisdictional boundaries. In one respect, the book a celebration of Pacific Northwest Indigenous peoples’ histories, languages, and cultures, documented in personal anecdotes and vivid, glossy photographs by Garreau. In another respect, the book could be seen as an elegy to Coast Salish languages, spiritualities, and names that have been subjugated at the hands of repressive federal residential schools, sometimes referred to as “assimilation camps.”