James Teit emigrated from the Shetland Islands to British Columbia in 1884, at the age of nineteen. In Canada he became a hunting guide, a linguist who spoke several Indian languages, and an activist for Native rights. An 1894 meeting with American anthropologist Franz Boas led to a long collaboration that established Teit as an authority on the Interior Salish peoples.

Teit’s connection to the Canadian Museum of Civilization and his ethnographic work among the Tahltan of northern British Columbia began in 1911. In two field seasons (1912 and 1915), with the participation of many Tahltan, Teit assembled a large and important collection of artifacts, photographs, song recordings and myths. Part biography and part catalogue of this collection, Recording Their Story reveals how the various threads of Teit’s life and work came together in his final major ethnographic study.