The Snuneymuxw live on the cusp of both the forest and the ocean. Their traditional houses were built on the coastal sliver of land around Departure Bay, along the Nanaimo River Estuary, and on Gabriola Island. Each season brought new resources. The entire village might relocate to harvest clams and seaweed on Gabriola Island's False and Dodd's Narrows in the spring. In the summer they would pick berries, hunt duck and deer in autumn, and catch fish from the lower Nanaimo and Fraser Rivers during the salmon run. Winter required shelter from storms and driving rains.

This seasonal movement of people to food-gathering areas included the movement of architecture. Each harvesting site would have a house frame, ready to be covered in smooth, cedar planks to make it secure and suitable for drying and storing food. Each time the community moved, all the planks would be unlashed from the frame and loaded onto a pair of canoes that would bear the weight of the planks between them.

The house frame, including posts and beams, would be left bare, awaiting the return of the village when the seasons changed once again. The cyclical use of the house frames meant that the men of the community had to be efficient in setting up the planks, while the women were in charge of organizing household and food processing equipment. The houses also had to be similar in size at every site in order to ensure that the planks would be long enough to fit the frame.