The river and its watershed -- from glacial headwaters to Pacific estuary -- provided the food, fur, tools, plants, medicine, timber, and fuel that enabled us to develop one of the most sophisticated cultures in North America.

Since the last great Ice Age we travelled, fished and settled along all 380 kilometres of the river and its tributaries.

In the Ayuukhl Nisga'a -- our ancient oral code -- there are many stories describing the river and its special places.

In modern times, the river flooded three times -- in 1917, 1936, and 1960. After the 1960 flood we moved our village of Gitlakdamiks to higher ground.

Despite the travesty of cut-and-run logging and the poisons that leach from abandoned mines, the Nass is still a place of pristine alpine beauty, unpolluted air, ancient forests and dramatic lanscapes of volcanic lava and glaciers.

Out on the Pacific coast, fjords knife into a long line of jagged mountain peaks, where a vast, forested landscape draped itself over the Coast Range. A sometimes harsh climate is moderated by warm winds and clouds that scud across the Pacific Ocean, bringing heavy rain and snow.

Our homeland straddles a spectacular route to Yukon and Alaska from Canada and northward to the glacier-fed lakes of Meziadin and Bowser. From the Skeena Mountains in the northeast to the intersection of the Alaska Panhandle and the B.C. coast, this is Nisga'a land.

The Nass supports all five species of Pacific salmon, the most important currency we have ever known. Rich salmon runs were harvested in a manner that allowed us to build our villages and developed a far-flung trading empire that reached deep into the Interior and ranged up and down the coast.

Besides salmon and steelhead, the Nass is home to the oolichan, a finger-sized member of the smelt family which is the mainstay of our culture and an historic staple of Nisga'a trade. In earlier times we shared our oolichan grounds with other tribes hungry after long winters. Oolichan are also known as "candlefish" because when dried, they retain enough oil to burn like a candle. We catch tonnes of the tiny fish every year near Fishery Bay.

With the oolichan comes its preditors: the sea lions, seals, porpoises, Orca whales, eagles, and flocks of gulls as thick as a snow blizzard.

Moving inland, giant hemlock, cedar, and sitka spruce forests gradually change to spruce, lodgepole, jack pine, and balsam forests, while stands of cottonwood cloak the valley floor.

For more than 10,000 years, we have thrived in this land, organizing ourselves into four clans -- Gisk'ahaast (Killer Whale), Laxgibuu (Wolf), Ganada (Raven) and Laxsgiik (Eagle).

We still hunt, fish, and trap. But today we are also lawyers, administrators, politicians, priests, teachers, linguists, loggers, commercial fishermen, carvers, dancers, nurses, architects, technicians, and business people.

Our population now numbers about 6,000. About 2,500 people live in the Nisga'a village of Gingolx (Kincolith), Lakalzap (Greenville), Gitwinksihlkw (Canyon City) and Gitlakdamiks (New Aiyansh). Another 3,500 live elsewhere in Canada and around the world.

At present, we are the only First Nations in B.C. formally negotiating land claims with the federal and provincial governments. The Nisga'a Land Question will be settled. Of that we are certain. We are prepared to do whatever is necessary to bring this about. Our elders are teaching us to look inside to find the strength and purity we need. Our young people are coming back from the cities to consult with our elders and to learn from them. They are bringing back home the skills and education we will need to build a new economy in the Nass. We are ready and poised for a new era for the Nisga'a Nation.

Devastated by smallpox, influenza and other diseases brought by Europeans, our ancestors were torn from their homes, exiled to reserves, forbidden to speak the Nisga'a language and pcratise our own beliefs. In short, we have been subjected to a system of cultural genocide for the past 130 years.

But we survived to become, in the final days of this century, a powerful symbol of rebirth and renewal for many of the First Nations of the world.

In the pages of this book we reaffirm our title to our Nass homeland and offer a contemporary portrait of our people and the places we live and work. Look at our faces. We are survivors. We have a story to tell.