The Nooksack (; Nooksack: Noxwsʼáʔaq) are a federally recognized Native American tribe near the Pacific Northwest Coast. They are a sovereign nation, located in the mainland northwest corner of Washington state in the United States along the Nooksack River near the small town of Deming (in western Whatcom County), and 12 miles south of the Canadian border. As of 2008, they had more than 1,800 enrolled members. Their terms for citizenship include descent from persons listed in a 1942 tribal census. They are part of the Coast Salish people and have traditionally spoken Nooksack, one of the Salishan family of languages. It is closely related to the Halkomelem language of coastal British Columbia, and at one time was considered a dialect of the latter. At the time of European encounter, the Nooksack people occupied territory extending into present-day British Columbia. But the setting of the border between Canada and the United States split the people into two territories. Halkomelem was still dominant in the Nooksack watershed in the US. History Like most Northwest Coast indigenous peoples, the Nooksack long occupied a watershed area where they relied on fishing, hunting, and clamming, as well as gathering root vegetables and berries, and processing these for sustenance. Their territory extended from the mountains to the coast of present-day northwest Washington state in the watershed of the Nooksack River, and into British Columbia, Canada. They set up seasonal camps for hunting or fishing, such as timing when they could harvest salmon runs. European exploration and colonization of the Pacific Northwest resulted in social disruption, high death rates from infectious disease, and their losing access to much of their historic territory. The surviving Nooksack continued to live near the river by which they are known. In 1934 Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed the Wheeler-Howard Act, also known as the Indian Reorganization Act. It was intended to help improve the condition of indigenous peoples by enabling them to revive and restore Indian self-government, which had been largely reduced, especially on Indian reservations. Because the Nooksack had not been granted reservation land by the U.S. government in the 19th century, they were not recognized as a tribe at the time by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In the 1930s the Nooksack tribe voted to accept the Wheeler-Howard Act and began working on a tribal constitution to establish an elected government under its model. They took