Ask someone from one of the tribes to come to class and talk with them. It’s important to show our students that these are still a living people and not relics of history. The best information comes straight from the source. Most of these tribes have educational programs, youth programs, and/or cultural programs. Reach out to them first. They may even have resource lists for you if they can’t send someone to speak with your students. Most of these tribes also have museums or cultural centers with resource materials as well. Without knowing what specific area you’re in, I can’t really point to specific sources, but based on mentioning Chinook, I’d start with them. https://chinooknation.org/

Also, if you’re in Washington or Oregon, both states have specific resource websites with Native Nation curricula that includes a directory of local tribes. For Washington it’s Since Time Immemorial and Oregon it’s Tribal History Shared History. Good luck!

I'm taking a guess here, but do you teach around the WA/OR border near the Columbia river?

"Peoples of Cascadia" by Heidi Bohan is a decent introduction to the peoples of Central and Southern British Columbia, Washington state, Northern Oregon, and Western Idaho, with great illustrations to help get the message across instead of just relying on descriptions.

If you could supply a few nearby tribes, I could probably narrow down some sources that'd be more pertinent to the peoples you're closest to since a lot of my library focuses more on Coast Salishan groups in the Seattle area and northwards.

It helps to first change the question from "was like" to "is like." Indigenous people aren't relics of the past and the way they do stuff is basically like everyone else does stuff. It might actually be more helpful to point out that it's a weird question and ask them what THEY do and how that's different from what THEIR ancestors did as an avenue into that conversation. Coast Salish and Chinook people are not weird foreign people... They are their neighbors!

Orrin Lewis has "for kids" sections on the different tribal pages on his website Native-Languages.org. So for example there's a general Chinook page which links to their fact sheet for kids. The "for kids" sections are pretty simple and might not provide as much information as you are looking for, but you might find them helpful.

This book rarely comes up for sale but "First Approaches to the Northwest Coast" by Derek Pethick provides an in depth look at early life along the coast. This is where I first learned of Chinook Olives.

Paul Kane's book "Wanderings of an Artist" has some casual observations of burial grounds and burial practices .

John Jewitt's "White Slaves of the Nootka" is a first person account of the time he spent as Chief Maquinna's slave in the early 1800's. Though he was on Vancouver Island many of the practices and the customs were the same.

Fur traders employed by the Northwest Company, Pacific Fur Company and the Hudson's Bay Company all kept journals recording their daily lives. Inside these are little gems noting unusual occurrences they saw. What makes these particularly valuable is that they were personal journals, never intended for publication. This means that they haven't been sensationalized or modified just to sell books.

I live on land in Oregon that belongs to the Kalapuya people. They were one of many speakers of the Chinuk Wawa trade language. The language was spoken up and down the west coast from BC to CA. Perhaps learning some of the vocab would help your students get a better understanding of what life was and is like?

The contemporary Kalapuya are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde who have been working on reviving Chinuk Wawa: https://www.grandronde.org/services/education/chinuk-wawa-education-program/

1863 Dictionary

Downloadable book about Chinuk Wawa (referred to as Chinook Jargon)

Hilary Stewart has a series of books on Northwest Coast culture. They are very accessible and considered pretty accurate by anthropologists. I recommend the one on Cedar and the one on Fishing.