Author Coll Thrush interprets PNW history through the wreckage of colonialism

The KUOW Book Club read "Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific" by Coll Thrush in February. Thrush joined KUOW's Katie Campbell live at Seattle Central Library Wednesday to talk about how shipwrecks brought settlers and Indigenous peoples suddenly, violently together — and how we’ve made sense of time and space through the wreckage.

This was the first of four live author conversations KUOW is hosting in partnership with the Seattle Public Library. Listen to the conversation below or find it in the Meet Me Here feed on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts.

W

hen you think about shipwrecks in the Northwest, what comes to mind? Bad weather? Old English paintings? Maybe a Kraken, wrapping its great tentacles around a ship?

What about settler colonialism? That may not be one of the first things exactly, but author and historian Coll Thrush wants to change that.

"We are all inside the story [of colonialism]," Thrush told me and about 160 people gathered at the library to hear about that story. "And right there, I think [people] start to latch on to something that is quite disorienting but also really empowering."

If you are disoriented while reading "Wrecked," congratulations, you get it. Thrush mentions more than 100 shipwrecks — a fraction of those that line the Northwest coast, the titular Graveyard of the Pacific — some in great detail, others fleetingly. He names the lives and commodities lost because of them. And he demonstrates how they shaped the history of this place as we know it, or as we may think we know it.

"My job is to disorient [my students and my readers] and provide them with some tools to reorient," he said.

In "Wrecked," the core tool is the extensive research Thrush did over six years to find accounts, both settler and Indigenous, of shipwrecks. These accounts, from survivors, witnesses, and rescuers, can be hard to grasp today. Just imagine seeing a ship for the first time or being a passenger only for it to be dashed to pieces in the surf. The stories are harrowing, like this newspaper account of the demise of the SS Pacific, which claimed the most lives of any single wreck on the Northwest coast:

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And because these shipwrecks were so traumatic, Thrush said settler colonialists felt they had more of a claim over these lands.

"To give you a sense of scale, [the SS Pacific] was going from Victoria to San Francisco, about one in 15 Victorians died in that wreck. So, really a significant event," Thrush said. "That kind of trauma became a way for settlers to claim place. ... 'We died for this, so now it's ours.'"

That's despite, as Thrush described at length in "Wrecked," the long-established Indigenous societies that already existed across the Pacific Northwest. As settler colonial ships arrived and frequently wrecked on these shores, the people they carried were thrust into the lives of Indigenous people who were often their rescuers.

"Stories of violence really take all the oxygen out of the room, when, in fact, it was Indigenous rescue [that saved many settler lives]," Thrush explained. "That is the story that I tried to surface, pun intended."

While "Wrecked" may lack the skeletal crews and ghost ships of other shipwreck tales, Thrush's book does contain many ghosts like these, ghosts whose stories have helped craft our understanding of the region, for better or worse.

Thrush argued these ships continue to sail today, pulling us further into the "big story" of colonialism. But their haunting does not have to be scary, it doesn't have to make us shy away from looking at it more closely and facing its legacy head on.

Thrush has ended each of his books, including "Native Seattle" and "Indigenous London," with a question. In "Wrecked," it was this: "Is the tide still coming in, or is it going out?"

I added to that during our conversation and asked Thrush, "Is the tide of colonialism, of history, of what we might call civilization, maybe even of humanity’s time on this earth, still coming in, or is it going out?"

He said that's for all of us to answer. That's the point.

"This is a collective project," he said. "You don't have to control all the story. That's why I end with questions, to leave a door open for the next person to come along and critique me or challenge me completely, say I missed something, whatever. That it is really a collective process."

So, what did he miss? What did I miss? Plenty, I'm sure. But if Thrush's work has taught me anything, it's that there is time to reconcile and to do better for the future.

On March 23, I'll be continuing our live speaker series with writer and artist Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe and her essay collection, "Thunder Song." This collection feels like the perfect pairing for "Wrecked," and I'm excited to be in conversation with LaPointe.

RSVP HERE.

More importantly, I'm excited to continue to challenge our readers to think of the questions Thrush posed, to think about your place here and in the reading, and to get a little disoriented.

I hope you'll join us and keep the tide flowing, in and out, through the wreckage of history.

RELATED: Cozy reader winter: Join KUOW Book Club, Seattle Public Library for live author talks