Through immersive ethnographic research, We are Coast Salish: Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and Border Securitization explores the lives of the Coast Salish First Nations of the Pacific Northwest and the various ways they respond to the challenges of navigating the Canada/US border following the events of 9/11. Decades of securitization policies have led to cultural and political changes which entail the creation of a transnational political identity that is used to resist the negative effects of the Canada/US border on their lives. Through cultural revitalization projects, environmental activism, and transnational political maneuvering, this book argues the Coast Salish resist the artificial separation of their people by the international border.
James M. Hundley utilizes ethnographic methods in sociocultural anthropology to argue that the resistance to security policies that threaten to divide the Coast Salish simultaneously reinforces the hegemony of the state and the ongoing forms of settler colonialism that continue to shape Indigenous lifeways across the continent. Ultimately, their ongoing efforts are a form of decolonization from those disenfranchised by the state and located outside the halls of power.
