In this provocative retelling of shipwreck tales from the coasts of Vancouver Island, Washington, and Oregon, historian and author Coll Thrush uses maritime misfortune to think about larger themes of history on the Northwest Coast. From a Spanish galleon wrecked in 1693 to an empty tanker broken on the shore in 1999, Wrecked is a new history of an iconic element of regional history, mythology, and identity.

Books will be available for purchase and signing after the presentation.

About the Author:

Coll Thrush (born 1970) is a settler historian who was raised in Auburn, Washington, in the treaty territory of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. A graduate of Fairhaven College at Western Washington University in Bellingham and the University of Washington in Seattle, Coll is professor of history and associate faculty in critical Indigenous studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, on unceded Musqueam territory. In 2021, Coll was named a UBC Killam teaching laureate. He is also the founding co-editor of the Indigenous Confluences book series at the University of Washington Press.

Coll is a scholar of Indigenous and colonial histories, usually with a focus on the northwest coast of North America (but including a major diversion to London, England). Notions of place and belonging animate virtually all his projects. What, for example, does it mean to have an allegiance to a territory in the context of empire and settler colonialism? And how do the stories we tell about our shared pasts in place give meaning to our collective presents and potential futures? Whether writing about Seattle or London, ghosts or earthquakes, food or shipwrecks, Coll is concerned with crafting engaging narratives that examine place, power, and meaning.