The Tlingit of southeastern Alaska live in a region of spectacular physical power and beauty. Rugged snow-capped mountains covered with the rich flora of a rainforest make overland travel difficult. Ice floes from glaciers, strong currents and tides hinder ocean travel. The surrounding ocean, forests and streams provide the Tlingit with sufficient material resources for their food, clothing, shelter and transportation. Over the centuries, the Tlingit have developed an intimate knowledge of and a relationship with their environment that enables them to live in balance with the land, the sea and the non-human persons with whom they share their world. Such a lifestyle was and continues to be based on the principles of propriety and reciprocity and proceeds from moral covenants which they establish with the non-human world.

For the past few centuries the traditional Tlingit cultural matrix has undergone significant change. Beginning with the Russian presence in the eighteenth century, traditional Tlingit ways of thinking, speaking and enacting their sacred rituals have been under pressure by Christian missionaries and American government officials. More recently, their clan-based social organization is giving way to a corporate model which is much more in tune with the economic, political and legal requirements of contemporary American society. In response to these changes, many within the Tlingit community are seeking to restore their cultural traditions and recover the basic values upon which traditional Tlingit life was based.