Pacific Northwest History: Home

Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the United States Forest Service (USFS) from 1905 to 1910, marveled at the Cascades' old growth trees. Yet sadly, despite what its namesake championed, no current visitor to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest can see the forest he revered. Instead, by mid-century the USFS dramatically increased allowable timber industry logging for all national forests and began replacing ancient forests with younger, faster-growing trees--alarming changes that threatened the loss of these amazing northwest woodlands as well as some of the distinctive creatures that inhabit them. By 1990 less than thirteen percent of the Pacific Northwest's original old growth remained, and projected USFS plans were to log most of the unprotected remnant by 2023. Focusing primarily on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, environmental activist Rand Schenk reviewed numerous USFS reports and interviewed its leaders, timber war stakeholders, and prominent environmentalists to examine 100 years of Pacific Northwest forestry. He reveals just how close regional forests came to extinction--discussing why the USFS moved away from decades of stewardship to relentless and unsustainable harvest, consequences of intensive management, and why attempts to replant trees failed. He explores how new laws like the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act and surprise discoveries following the Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption slowly initiated change. Finally, he reviews efforts to restore the damage and offers hope for old growth rebirth.

Documents the origins, actions, and impacts of the Black Student Union in the state of Washington during the tumultuous late 1960s. Washington State Rising documents the origins, actions, and impact of the Black Student Union (BSU) in Washington from 1967 to 1970. The BSU was a politicized student organization that had chapters across the West Coast and played a prominent role in the student wing of the Black Power Movement. Through accounts of Black student struggles at two different college campuses in Washington, one urban and one rural, Marc Arsell Robinson details how the BSU led highly consequential protest campaigns at both institutions and beyond, which led to reforms such as the establishment of Black Studies programs, increased hiring of Black faculty and staff, and new initiatives to recruit and retain students of color. Washington State Rising is the first book to document 1960s Black student activism in the Pacific Northwest and includes extensive oral history interviews with former BSU members. Robinson uncovers new insights into Black politics, locating the Black Power Movement in Seattle, Washington, a city and state not typically associated with 1960s black protest. At once fascinating and revelatory, Washington State Rising provides historical insights for current and future social justice activism.

Through immersive ethnographic research, We are Coast Salish: Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and Border Securitization explores the lives of the Coast Salish First Nations of the Pacific Northwest and the various ways they respond to the challenges of navigating the Canada/US border following the events of 9/11. Decades of securitization policies have led to cultural and political changes which entail the creation of a transnational political identity that is used to resist the negative effects of the Canada/US border on their lives. Through cultural revitalization projects, environmental activism, and transnational political maneuvering, this book argues the Coast Salish resist the artificial separation of their people by the international border. James M. Hundley utilizes ethnographic methods in sociocultural anthropology to argue that the resistance to security policies that threaten to divide the Coast Salish simultaneously reinforces the hegemony of the state and the ongoing forms of settler colonialism that continue to shape Indigenous lifeways across the continent. Ultimately, their ongoing efforts are a form of decolonization from those disenfranchised by the state and located outside the halls of power.

A provocative retelling of shipwreck tales from the Northwest Coast The Northwest Coast of North America is a treacherous place. Unforgiving coastlines, powerful currents, unpredictable weather, and features such as the notorious Columbia River bar have resulted in more than two thousand shipwrecks, earning the coastal areas of Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island the moniker ?Graveyard of the Pacific.? Beginning with a Spanish galleon that came ashore in northern Oregon in 1693 and continuing into the recent past, Wrecked includes stories of many vessels that met their fate along the rugged coast and the meanings made of these events by both Indigenous and settler survivors and observers. Commemorated in museums, historical markers, folklore, place-names, and the remains of the ships themselves, the shipwrecks have created a rich archive. Whether in the form of a fur-trading schooner that was destroyed in 1811, a passenger liner lost in 1906, or an almost-empty tanker broken on the shore in 1999, shipwrecks on the Northwest Coast opens up conversations about colonialism and Indigenous persistence. Thrush?s retelling of shipwreck tales highlights the ways in which the three central myths of settler colonialism?the disappearance of Indigenous people, the control of an endlessly abundant nature, and the idea that the past would stay past?proved to be untrue. As a critical cultural history of this iconic element of the region, Wrecked demonstrates how the history of shipwrecks reveals the fraught and unfinished business of colonization on the Northwest Coast.