I fell compelled to share a talk I attended this past week, at Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum. It was a interview that Knute Berger, a columnist with CrossCut.com (aka Mossback) as he talks with Coll Thrush, a history professor at the University of British Columbia. The talk was titled: The Transformative Native Presence in Seattle and London. Fortunately, TalkingStickTV video taped the hour plus discussion. You can watch the video on YouTube: Coll Thrush (Author - Native Seattle) in Conversation with Knute Berger.
There is a second video, on YouTube.com, that talks specifically about a tour that Coll took his history students on, in London. You can see that video here: “What We Found in Indigenous London” Student Presentations • July 8, 2016.
Coll talks about his role as a history professor is to disorientate people - to take a place, or a person, or an event that seems familiar and come at it from left field. • He speaks about the fact that UBC’s Point Grey Campus is located on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam coast Salish people. • I also appreciated his discussion about 'narrative estrangement' (at 8:50 in the video): narrative meaning stories and estrangement meaning separation. The idea that urban and indigenous histories somehow don't have anything to do with each other-when one begins and the other necessarily ends. These two histories are not mutually exclusive, but in fact they are mutually constitutive, they actually create each other.
I would encourage anyone, who is interested in indigenous populations, watch (or listen to) the interview with Coll and Knute.
There is a lot to 'unpack'.
Mar 13, 2017 10:53 AM
