The cultural foundation of the Lummi people is inseparable from the waters of the Pacific Northwest. They are a "Salmon People," whose spiritual, physical, and economic survival has always relied on the seasonal return of the salmon.

The history of the Nooksack Indian Tribe is an extraordinary narrative of adaptation to an encroaching modern world and a fierce determination to retain their political autonomy and ancestral identity. The Nooksack people have inhabited the Nooksack River watershed—from the high mountain area surrounding Mt. Baker to the saltwater at Bellingham Bay—since the beginning of human existence on the land.