In 1935, National Museum of Canada anthropologist Diamond Jenness did several months of fieldwork with the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern Vancouver Island. His main focus was the WSANEC, then a little-known group whose reserves lay on the Saanich Peninsula, a short distance from Victoria. Here, and later in neighbouring areas, local elders shared with him their knowledge of the "old ways," a mode of living they all knew at first-hand in their younger days. Covering a wide array of subjects, everything from fishing practices and marriage customs to conceptions of the natural world around...