Hello, and welcome to this bonus episode of A History, recorded straight after our recently published episode. Who is Chief Seattle? I'm joined now by the guest from that episode, Cole Thrush, to discuss this a little bit more. Cole, thank you so much for hanging on.

Of course.

It was really great to talk to you in the podcast about Chief Seattle. There really isn't an awful lot about him, is there?

No, it's. For a figure that is so prominent and culturally significant, he is a bit of a shadow in the archives in many ways. And when we do have his voice, it's often filtered through settler interlocutors. And he's a bit of a slippery figure in many ways. As important as he clearly was and still is, it can be a little bit hard to pin him down at times.

Yeah, I. I do feel as though the same could be said for Native American history generally. You know, it can be very difficult to find credible sources of information. There's a lot of noise out there, isn't there?

Yeah, there is. And I think, you know, Siat is a person who has a lot of noise, has kind of collected around him over the decades since his death in 1866. And. And, you know, 100 years on from his death, people were still sort of embellishing the speech that's attributed to him with all kinds of other ideas that were not his. And so, yeah, there's a lot to wade through, a lot of folklore to wade through, but there still is a real kernel of a really important historical person who was real and who did good work.

Yeah. And, I mean, of course, credit has to go to people like yourselves for, you know, trying to present some sort of cohesive, you know, history. And on that note, you know, tell me about your book.

Sure, yeah. My book, Native Seattle Histories from the Crossing Over Place, was published in 2007, and I'm really thrilled that it won the Washington State Book Award that year. And what I tried to do in that project was bring together urban and. And Indigenous histories, which are usually treated as though they're mutually exclusive. When urban history begins, Indigenous history ends, or that's the way the story is typically told. And I really wanted to challenge that by showing how indigenous and urban histories are actually. They're not mutually exclusive. They're mutually constitutive. They create each other together. And a place like Seattle is a great place to do that. Where you've got local people like the Duwamish, in whose territory the city grew up, you've got Native migrants to the city from all kinds of other places. And you've got uses of so called Indian imagery in the city. So what does it mean when a city sells itself using a totem pole as its symbol? What does that say about settler society? So it's a really rich place to do this kind of work. And the book has had a really good life, largely without me, and we'll.

Link to that in the show notes as well, so people can check that out. And I do wonder, though, that you have to think that when. When, you know, skyscrapers are built and when cities are constructed, that actually there has to be an adverse effect on the people that lived on that land. So surely the settler's gain is a loss to the indigenous, right?

Yeah, and that was definitely true in Seattle. Indigenous people were starving to death with inside of the downtown in the 1920s, trying to live on the river named after them and just not able to survive anymore there. And so many people, they either married into the settler community or they moved to area reservations. Those were kind of the two strategies. But one of the things about urban history is that cities always dig up their own past. And so indigenous history has never been fully absent in the city. It's always been there. Whether it's ancestral remains being disturbed or a place name being used or whatever. There's so many opportunities for indigenous history to kind of reawaken.

And actually, you know, we touched a little bit on cultural appropriation in the main episode. But thinking about that and what you've just said, Washington perhaps gets more of a spotlight on things like that, because in recent years, you've seen, you know, the football team, the Washington get renamed, because obviously that was. That was just a bad choice. And, you know, there's other examples of, you know, I mean, we've just talked about Seattle, but actually in the main episode, we. We kind of highlighted how the relationship between native and settler communities was perhaps more positive compared to, you know, the national average, I should say. So was it. Was it meant out of disrespect? When, particularly when people in Washington name things after Native people?

It really depends. I mean, the case of the Washington football team, that's. It's just a racist. Racist epithet. Yeah. There's no question there. The R word is as bad as it gets.

Yeah.

And it's an inherently violent term. And then you have things like, you know, communities that in their high schools, they use mascots like the savages or the Indians or whatever. And all of those are kind of predicated on the idea that real indigenous people are either gone or no longer authentic. And so in that process, these metaphors become kind of free floating and non indigenous people think that they're just free for the taking. And so all of these mascot ideas are sort of dependent upon the idea that Indigenous people are going to disappear and just become symbols.

Yeah, it's a great point. So, I mean, in summary, no should not be done. Which is good thinking. Again, sort of more present day, what is that relationship like between Native communities and. And non Native communities, particularly in Washington State?

Yeah, well, I mean, there's been over the last half century, a massive resurgence of Indigenous culture and politics and law in Washington state, in the Seattle area in particular. And so, for example, now the major sports teams in Seattle are sponsored by area tribes, or at least federally recognized tribes. When you come ashore on the ferry into downtown Seattle, there are Coast Salish welcoming figures welcoming you to the city. It's very much a part of the fabric of the city and of the region. That doesn't mean there's no controversy, but Indigenous communities are extremely prominent now. And even in the case of the Duwamish, who are not federally recognized, they still have a lot of cultural prominence in the city, in part because of their connection to Chief Seattle.

Yeah. And so how, how integrated are Native communities? You know, I'm thinking kind of, you know, the ancestors of. Of these tribes that some of whom probably stayed in the. These sort of urban centers. And you said sort of married into, you know, settler communities. Is there. Is there still much separation between them?

It sort of depends. I mean, that's always the, the historian's answer, right? It depends. But, you know, there are lots of places where indigenous and settler communities are really integrated with each other. There are a lot of places where they aren't. I grew up at the edge of a reservation, and it was a very segregated place. This is back in the 1970s and 80s. Yeah, it was an intensely segregated place. And now the tribe is the number one employer in my hometown. So it's really changed in those last, you know, in the course of my lifetime.

Yeah. And funnily enough, we had a conversation towards the start of this year, actually, about the, the boarding schools. And, you know, obviously Joe Biden, president at the time, issued a formal apology for that and. But does bring into question the fact that, you know, it's 2025 and we've only just seen a federal apology for something as horrific as that. And it really kind of highlights just how far there still is to go in that relationship.

Right, yeah, yeah. And it's true here in Canada as well, where the last residential school closed in the late 1990s. Right. So this is a very recent history here. And, you know, that kind of history has implications that echo down the generations. And so we have to really think about intergenerational trauma, particularly when it's not. Not acknowledged by wider society at all. And so that's a larger process that Canada has. Has been dealing with through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But the US has just never really addressed in a meaningful way, an apology is not enough.

Yeah, absolutely. Anyone can give an apology. Right.

It's just a word, but it's meaningful. But it's not enough.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, on that note, there's still a lot more to talk about on the podcast, and we're going to. I mean, one thing that we've really tried to make a concerted effort of is to. Is to cover Native history as much as possible, and we'll continue to do so on the podcast because that is obviously an incredibly important part of North American history as well. So, Carl, I can't thank you enough for joining me to continue that discussion and talk about Chief Seattle and remind everyone where they can get in touch with you.

Okay. Yeah, they can find me@colthrush.com and also through the University of British Columbia. I'm pretty findable.

Great. Yeah, thank you. And thanks again for joining the podcast.

Of course.

It's been a pleasure. For any listeners that want to know more, there'll be information in the show notes, links to everything we've mentioned, and do make sure as well that you follow the podcast. And if you do really love what we do, you can support us as well. All the information is in the show notes, but thank you all so much for listening, and goodbye.