My name is Tachini Pete, and for more than 30 years I have dedicated my life to studying, documenting, and understanding the deeper structure of the Salish language.

I have spent decades listening to elders, learning from speakers, studying thousands of words, and following patterns that most people do not yet see. Over time, this work grew into something much bigger than collecting definitions or translating words. It became a long research journey into how the language actually works at its foundation.

What I have come to understand is this:

One of the biggest challenges in language preservation and revitalization is not only that we need more teaching materials. It is that much of the deeper structure of the language is still not widely understood. And if we do not know how something works, it becomes much harder to teach it well.

That is why this project matters so much to me.

I am working to research, organize, and present the deeper root structure of the Salish language—the root families, recurring meaning patterns, and underlying structures that help explain how words are formed and how meaning moves through the language. I believe this work can help teachers, learners, and future generations by making the language more understandable, more teachable, and more accessible, while still honoring its depth.

This work is urgent.

There are very few first-language speakers remaining. The time to do this work is now, while knowledge can still be checked, refined, and carried forward in a good way. I have already given much of my life to this effort because I believe it is necessary. I have also spent more than $150,000 of my own money over the years to keep this work going.

I did that because I believed in the work.

I still do.

But I have reached the point where I need help to continue at the level this project deserves.

This fundraiser will help support me so I can continue the Salish Root Project full-time. It will help me keep researching, organizing decades of material, consulting with language people, creating public educational content, and building an online platform to make this work available to others. It will also help me document and share the research journey so people can see not only the outcomes, but the process of discovery itself.

I am not trying to build something temporary. I am trying to build something that will last.

My hope is to create work that can help future learners, teachers, language programs, and communities long after I am gone. I want to help make the deeper structure of the language visible, usable, and teachable in a way that has not been available before.

If you support this fundraiser, you are helping me continue that work.

You are helping protect knowledge that is urgent and irreplaceable.

You are helping me give this research the time and focus it needs.

You are helping build something for the future of the language.

I have carried this work as far as I could on my own. If you are able to help me carry it further, I would be deeply grateful.

— Tachini Pete