Wayne Suttles (1918–2005) was an American

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

and

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

. He was the leading authority on the ethnology and linguistics of the

Coast Salish people The Coast Salish is a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak one of the Coast ...

of the Northwest Coast of North America.

Biography

As a student of

Erna Gunther Erna Gunther (1896–1982) was an American anthropologist who taught for many years at the University of Washington in Seattle. Gunther's work on ethnobotany is still extensively consulted today. Biography Gunther graduated from Barnard College ...

at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

, Suttles in 1951, was the first to be awarded a Ph.D. in anthropology at that institution. He did

ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

work with Northwest Coast people, especially the Coast Salish, beginning in the mid-1940s and linguistic work beginning in the mid-1950s. His publications on the Coast Salish, including his interpretation of the relationship between culture and environment and the nature of the social network, have had a significant influence on both ethnographic and archaeological work in the region. As editor of Vol. 7, Northwest Coast, of the ''Handbook of North American Indians'', Suttles was instrumental in making scholars active in different kinds of research aware of each other's work. He also testified as an expert witness in several legal cases relating to Native rights in both Washington State and British Columbia, the most important of which was R. v. Sparrow, which established Native fishing rights across Canada. His 2004 grammar of the Musqueam language was a milestone in Salish studies.

Selected works

*(2004) ''Musqueam Reference Grammar''. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. *(1998) The Ethnographic Significance of the Fort Langley Journals. pp. 163–210 in ''The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-1830'', Edited by Morag Maclachlan. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. *(1987) ''Coast Salish Essays''. Vancouver: Talonbooks; Seattle: University of Washington. *(1974) ''The Economic Life of the Coast Salish of Haro and Rosario Straits''. New York: Garland. 1918 births 2005 deaths University of Washington alumni Linguists of Salishan languages 20th-century American anthropologists {{US-anthropologist-stub