Wrecked: Navigating Colonialism in the Graveyard of the Pacific

Drawn from a forthcoming University of Washington Press book, this presentation uses the history of shipwrecks on the Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island coasts to talk about colonialism as a (mostly) failed project. Arguing that shipwrecks are opportunities to rethink the history of relationships between peoples and places in the region and beyond, the lecture will reframe this especially potent element of Northwest history as a way to reimagine past, present, and future.

Coll Thrush is professor of history and Killam teaching laureate at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in unceded Coast Salish territories, and associate faculty at UBC’s Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. He is the author of 2007’s Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place and co-editor of Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American History & Culture (2011). His most recent book is Indigenous London: Native Travellers at the Heart of Empire (2016), and he is a founding series editor of Indigenous Confluences at the University of Washington Press.