In March 2008, George Harris of the Stz'uminus First Nation proposed calling the Strait of Georgia the Salish Sea, an idea that had been circulating since Bert Webber of Bellingham, Washington first suggested it in 1989. Webber's original proposal was expansive: a single name for the Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and all adjoining waters -- the interconnected marine system that the Coast Salish peoples had navigated as one body of water for thousands of years. Harris's proposal met with approval from B.C.'s Aboriginal Relations Minister Mike de Jong, who pledged to bring it before the provincial cabinet. The Coast Salish Gathering, a trans-boundary organization of Coast Salish leaders, had already been using the name since 2007. On February 9, 2010, British Columbia formally adopted the name Salish Sea in its Throne Speech opening the provincial legislature.

The Stz'uminus First Nation's largest reserve, Chemainus Indian Reserve No. 13, sits on Stuart Channel, one of the countless smaller waterways within the broader Salish Sea. The reserve occupies the southeastern coast of Vancouver Island near the town of Ladysmith, a stretch of shoreline where the protected waters between Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands create sheltered passages rich in marine life. As a member government of the Naut'sa mawt Tribal Council, the Stz'uminus participate in a broader governance structure that links First Nations across the region. Their territory looks out across the water that now officially bears a name reflecting the people who have lived along it since long before the naming of Georgia, Juan de Fuca, or Puget.

The decision to change from Chemainus to Stz'uminus was more than administrative housekeeping. Hul'qumi'num, the language from which the name derives, is a Central Coast Salish language spoken by several First Nations on southeastern Vancouver Island and the adjacent Gulf Islands. Like many Indigenous languages in British Columbia, it faces severe endangerment, with a declining number of fluent speakers. Restoring the nation's Hul'qumi'num name was an act of linguistic sovereignty -- a refusal to continue answering to a name imposed by the colonial apparatus that had simultaneously suppressed the language from which the correct name came. When the Stz'uminus First Nation succeeded in renaming both themselves and the body of water their territory overlooks, they demonstrated that the power to name a place is never simply descriptive. It is a claim of belonging, an assertion of continuity, and a statement that the oldest names for these waters and peoples are still the most accurate ones.