Tlingit Indians

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.