The Tlingit or Lingít ( KLING-kit, TLING-kit) are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Tlingit people are Alaska Natives and First Nations in Canada. They speak the Tlingit language, a Na-Dene language.
The Tlingit have a matrilineal kinship system, with children born into the mother's clan, and property and hereditary roles passing through the mother's line. Their culture and society developed in the temperate rainforest of the southeast Alaskan coast and the Alexander Archipelago. The Tlingit have maintained a complex hunter-gatherer culture based on semi-sedentary management of fisheries. Hereditary slavery was practiced extensively until it was outlawed by the United States Government. The Inland Tlingit live in the far northwestern part of the province of British Columbia and the southern Yukon in Canada. Taku Tlingit live in British Columbia and Alaska.
Their autonym Lingít means 'People of the Tides'. The Russian name Koloshi (Колоши, from a Sugpiaq-Alutiiq term kulut'ruaq for the labret worn by women) or the related German name Koulischen may be encountered referring to the people in older historical literature, such as Grigory Shelikhov's 1796 map of Russian America.
Federally recognized tribes of Tlingit people in the United States are in Alaska and include:
Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes
Chilkat Indian Village (Klukwan)
Chilkoot Indian Association (Haines)
Klawock Cooperative Association
Wrangell Cooperative Association
Sealaska Corporation is an Alaska Native Regional Corporation that includes Tlingit people. Within Sealaska are smaller regional corporations.
First Nations in Canada of Tlingit people are in British Columbia and Yukon and include:
Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Yukon
Taku River Tlingit First Nation, British Columbia
The greatest territory historically occupied by the Tlingit extended from the Portland Canal along the present border between Alaska and British Columbia, north to the coast just southeast of the Copper River delta in Alaska. The Tlingit occupied almost all of the Alexander Archipelago, except the southernmost end of Prince of Wales Island and its surroundings, where the Kaigani Haida moved just before the first encounters with European explorers.
The Coastal Tlingit tribes controlled one of the mountain passes into the Yukon interior; they were divided into three tribes: the Chilkat Tlingit (Jilḵáat Ḵwáan) along the Chilkat River and on Chilkat Peninsula, the Chilkoot Tlingit (Jilḵoot Ḵwáan) and the Taku Tlingit (Tʼaaḵu Ḵwáan) along the Taku River.
Inland, the Tlingit occupied areas along the major rivers that pierce the Coast Mountains and Saint Elias Mountains and flow into the Pacific, including the Alsek, Tatshenshini, Chilkat, Taku, and Stikine rivers. With regular travel up these rivers, the Tlingit developed extensive trade networks with Athabascan tribes of the interior, and commonly intermarried with them. From this regular travel and trade, a few relatively large populations of Tlingit settled around Atlin, Teslin, and Tagish Lakes, whose headwaters flow from areas near the headwaters of the Taku River.
Delineating the current territory of the Tlingit is complicated because they live in both Canada and the United States, they lack designated reservations, other complex legal and political concerns make the situation confusing, and their population is highly mobile. They also share territory with Athabascan peoples such as the Tahltan, Kaska, and Tagish. In Canada, the Interior Tlingit communities, such as Atlin, British Columbia (Taku River Tlingit), Teslin, Yukon (Teslin Tlingit Council), and Carcross, Yukon (Carcross/Tagish First Nation) have reserves.
Tlingits in Alaska lack Indian reservations because the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) established regional corporations throughout Alaska with complex portfolios of land ownership rather than bounded reservations administered by Tribal Governments. The corporation in the Tlingit region is Sealaska Corporation, which serves the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian in Alaska.