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fractaltexan's review against another edition
5.0
An interesting and wonderful book on history and how it can transform and distort the past in and of itself.
mwmakar's review
informative
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Brilliant research, giving intimate snapshots of lives that, collectively, play out to form the city. The book tears down any idea of a single narrative in how such a diverse and multifaceted place formed. It connects current Seattle with all of Seattle’s past much more effectively than most common conceptions.
_micah_'s review
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.5
A fascinating monograph of the Indigenous-settler histories of Seattle and, by extension, the Indigenous-settler history the Pacific Northwest as a whole. Though there were moments when I wished for more present-day oral histories, the archival research is thorough and takes the reader from the landing of the Denny party on Alki beach up through the Indigenous activisms of the 1970's, repeatedly noting the many ways that civic bureaucracies of Seattle utilized Indigenous imagery (especially that of non-Seattle area Haida artwork) while simultaneously ignoring or actively ghettoizing Indigenous communities. The volume is completed with an annotated atlas of place names that, among other things, will serve anyone wresting with the myth of the "uncultivated land" of the PNW on settler arrival.
Thrush's shines in his analyses of "place-story," a "term to capture the conjunction between sites of history and the accounts we make of them." It's a simple enough concept, but one that has followed me as I've reflected on my life in modern Vancouver and Spokane and, especially, as I've tried to make sense of the changes that happened in my hometown of Portland between 1990 and 2020. He returns to the idea of place-story throughout, regularly revisiting the ways in which Indigeneity became a metaphor for the displacement of one (white settler) city population for another, while also poking at the bigger idea: How do we make place-stories that matter? I find this especially relevant while living in a modern settler architecture that feels built on alienation. I am not just a person, living in a place, but attached to somewhere with histories and stories I am now also intrinsically tied to. As Thrush references Fred Moody's Seattle and the Demons of Ambition: "What kind of city is Seattle becoming?" was also "What the hell am I turning into?" As Seattle has changed, so to has anyone who has lived there, and Seattle is a reflects the constant adaptation of settler culture and the Indigenous peoples who refused to be passive.
Native Seattle is for anyone looking for a dive into PNW histories of empire, or just looking to get a firmer understanding of what their own local histories might be missing in their place-stories. As we are reminded again and again, there are stories bigger and deeper here than any traditional settler history would teach us.
Thrush's shines in his analyses of "place-story," a "term to capture the conjunction between sites of history and the accounts we make of them." It's a simple enough concept, but one that has followed me as I've reflected on my life in modern Vancouver and Spokane and, especially, as I've tried to make sense of the changes that happened in my hometown of Portland between 1990 and 2020. He returns to the idea of place-story throughout, regularly revisiting the ways in which Indigeneity became a metaphor for the displacement of one (white settler) city population for another, while also poking at the bigger idea: How do we make place-stories that matter? I find this especially relevant while living in a modern settler architecture that feels built on alienation. I am not just a person, living in a place, but attached to somewhere with histories and stories I am now also intrinsically tied to. As Thrush references Fred Moody's Seattle and the Demons of Ambition: "What kind of city is Seattle becoming?" was also "What the hell am I turning into?" As Seattle has changed, so to has anyone who has lived there, and Seattle is a reflects the constant adaptation of settler culture and the Indigenous peoples who refused to be passive.
Native Seattle is for anyone looking for a dive into PNW histories of empire, or just looking to get a firmer understanding of what their own local histories might be missing in their place-stories. As we are reminded again and again, there are stories bigger and deeper here than any traditional settler history would teach us.
neoteotihuacan's review
5.0
This is exceptional and necessary. Native Seattle explores the idea that Native America had been and still is an active participant in America's urban landscape. Of course, you might say... why wouldn't this be the case? But the assumption that Native Nations were a mode of the past and that they were mutually exclusive to America's new Euro-based cities, destined to vanish away, is so ingrained as an element of racism in America's place-story as to be taken as fact.
Native Seattle uses the Emerald City as a case study for an academic category of study that, by all fairness, should exist more robustly than it does. What happened, and is happening, in Seattle and the rest of urban America is more surprising and richer than you imagined. Read this book.
Native Seattle uses the Emerald City as a case study for an academic category of study that, by all fairness, should exist more robustly than it does. What happened, and is happening, in Seattle and the rest of urban America is more surprising and richer than you imagined. Read this book.
8amtrain's review against another edition
5.0
coll thrush does a really thorough job of chronicling a native history of seattle that is directly linked to ongoing dispossession/expropriation. i think it's especially remarkably written given how easily native iconography has been appropriated for settler place-story in seattle, in hippie/environmental movements, etc. – thrush points this out specifically and takes care to distinguish between appropriations and reclamations of seattle's indigenous past/present. 🌊recommended reading🌊
kristy's review
5.0
Excellent book! Very well researched, deep, and not at all dry; it is full with relatable stories, names, and clear-headed analysis. I have been living in the area for about 20 years now, and am ashamed to just learn about the city's history from this point of view. This book should be a required read for anyone living and visiting here; many might be surprised and shocked, as I sure was, by some of the eye-opening facts. It also inspired me to visit some of the mentioned places and pay my respect. I sure will be treading much lighter on this land!
eldang's review
5.0
A beautiful book that powerfully illustrates its key claim: that the Native history of Seattle may be dramatically changed and challenged, but it's neither past nor complete. A few things I particularly appreciated:
* The vivid description of the multi-ethnic Seattle of the early pioneer days. It made me wish that hadn't been wiped out, and wonder what kind of hybrid culture could have emerged in a Seattle or a Vancouver that had allowed it to keep flourishing.
* A clear sense of how the contemporary Tribes of the region relate to ancestral and language groups.
* A much clearer portrayal than I've seen elsewhere of who "Chief" Seattle really was and why he commanded so much respect and attention.
* Many mentions of individuals and families who weren't necessarily individually notable. A lot of them are very brief sketches, but they still mean much more than just saying "we know there were Shilsholes and Muckleshoots working at this mill", etc.
* The powerful sense of continuity of Native Seattle even among all the hardship and forced change.
* The atlas section at the end that brings the immediate pre-Settler period to life though its list of place names and explanations of their significance.
That atlas was what I thought the whole book would be, but it's actually much more interesting in the context of all the stories that precede it.
* The vivid description of the multi-ethnic Seattle of the early pioneer days. It made me wish that hadn't been wiped out, and wonder what kind of hybrid culture could have emerged in a Seattle or a Vancouver that had allowed it to keep flourishing.
* A clear sense of how the contemporary Tribes of the region relate to ancestral and language groups.
* A much clearer portrayal than I've seen elsewhere of who "Chief" Seattle really was and why he commanded so much respect and attention.
* Many mentions of individuals and families who weren't necessarily individually notable. A lot of them are very brief sketches, but they still mean much more than just saying "we know there were Shilsholes and Muckleshoots working at this mill", etc.
* The powerful sense of continuity of Native Seattle even among all the hardship and forced change.
* The atlas section at the end that brings the immediate pre-Settler period to life though its list of place names and explanations of their significance.
That atlas was what I thought the whole book would be, but it's actually much more interesting in the context of all the stories that precede it.
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