Tlingit

The Tlingit (Lingit) are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Alaska Natives and Canadian First Nations, whose society grew in the temperate rainforest of the southeast Alaska coast and the Alexander Archipelago. They speak Tlingit, a Na-Dene language, and reckon belonging through the mother's clan: Raven and Eagle moieties own crests, songs, fishing sites and hereditary roles that pass from uncle to nephew. From semi-sedentary winter towns of cedar plank houses they managed salmon weirs, halibut banks, seal rookeries and mountain-goat country with an owner's precision, trading copper, eulachon oil and Chilkat blankets up and down the coast; hereditary slavery underwrote the wealth of great houses. The Tlingit resisted Russian and then American intrusion, fighting the Battle of Sitka in 1804 before adapting as fishermen, guides and traders. The Inland Tlingit of British Columbia and the Yukon extend the nation interior; clan at.oow (owned things) law still governs potlatch, marriage and land today.