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Town Hall Seattle and University of Washington Press present

Coll Thrush with Joshua L. Reid

Wrecked — Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific

Date:
Tuesday, June 3
Time:
7:30 pm PDT
Cost:
$10 – $35 + Optional Book Add-On
Learn more about Sliding Scale tickets.

Venue

The Wyncote NW Forum
1119 8th Ave (Entrance off Seneca St.)
Seattle, 98101 United States
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Event Format

In-Person

Note: Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.

Doors for this event will open at 6:30 PM.

Book cover for "Wrecked" by Coll Thrush, featuring an aerial view of a shipwreck on a dark sandy beach, with foamy ocean waves washing over it. The book title "Wrecked" runs vertically on the left, with the subtitle "Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific" in blue text on the right.
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Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific (Hardcover)

Elliott Bay Book Company

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From left to right: Headshots of Coll Thrush (with gray hair, beard, and brown glasses) and Joshua L. Reid (with short grey hair and black suit)
Arts & Culture

A fur-trading schooner beached in 1811. A passenger liner lost in 1906. An almost-empty tanker broken on the shore in 1999. These shipwrecks, and thousands more, are why the northwest coast of North America is sometimes called the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Drawing from his book, Wrecked, history professor and author Coll Thrush tells the stories of many vessels that met their fate along this rugged coast and how they open up conversations about colonialism, Indigenous persistence, and place-based history.

Shipwrecks are commemorated in museums, historical markers, folklore, place names, and the remains of the ships themselves. They’ve become a rich regional archive that has inspired Indigenous and settler survivors and observers to create meaning for these events. Thrush examines the ways in which shipwreck tales highlight––and debunk––myths of settler colonialism: the disappearance of Indigenous people, the control of an endlessly abundant nature, and the idea that the past would stay past.

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There’s no doubt that shipwrecks capture our imagination. Thrush also shows that these disasters are passageways to deeper stories. Through a cultural history of this notorious part of the Northwest, Thrush demonstrates how the tales of shipwrecks reveal the fraught and unfinished business of colonization.

Coll Thrush is a professor of history at the University of British Columbia and founding co-editor of the Indigenous Confluences book series at the University of Washington Press. He is the author previously of Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place and Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire.

Joshua L. Reid (citizen of the Snohomish Indian Nation) is an associate professor of American Indian Studies and the John Calhoun Smith Memorial Endowed Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, where he directs the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs.


Presented by Town Hall Seattle and University of Washington Press.

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