Map used with permission, from Coull, C., A Traveller's Guide to Aboriginal B.C., Whitecap Books: Vancouver, 1996

In spite of regional diversity, there are three main cultural areas in the province. The major division is between the Northwest Coast and the Interior. The Interior is divided into the southern (Plateau), and the northern (Subarctic).

The Northwest Coast has the mildest climate and greatest number of resources available for food and materials. Therefore the Northwest Coast held the largest population of First Nations, and the greatest variety of languages and customs.

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The people typically lived in dwellings often called Big Houses built of wooden planks, grouped in villages or towns marked by totem poles. The economy, based on the rich resources of the sea, rivers and forest, supported a society with a distinct class system who shared or distributed their wealth to the rest of the population through elaborate rituals. The coastal potlatch is one example of this type of event.

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The enormous resources of the sea, particularly the salmon, allowed aboriginal people of the Northwest Coast to build relatively permanent settlements. These resources also meant that people were provided with more leisure time in which to pursue the rich life of ceremony and art for which the First Nations of the Northwest Coast are famous.

The Plateau cultural region of the southern interior of the province is characterized by forests and dry grasslands drained by the Fraser River and Columbia River systems. Most of the Plateau peoples speak Interior Salish languages, related to languages spoken on the southern coast. The population was smaller, the material culture was simpler, and the social system less structured than on the coast. Typically, the economy was based on salmon fishing, deer hunting, and gathering of wild-plant foods. More mobile in summer, the people settled into small villages of pit houses in the winter.

The Subarctic cultural area of the northern interior of British Columbia is a region of pine and spruce forests with a colder, harsher climate than the south. The people speak Athapaskan languages and traditionally lived a mobile or nomadic life of hunting and gathering. Even here however, salmon were important along the great rivers, and some nations with easy access to the sea had much in common with the culture of the coastal peoples.