Title

City of the Changers

Description

Journal article from Pacific Historical Review depicts the experiences of the Duwamish and other Indigenous peoples during urban change of Seattle, Washington between the 1880s and 1930s. It talks about transformation like the creation of a canal between Puget Sound and Lake Washington and the straightening of the Duwamish River.

Creator

Coll Thrush

Abstract

Between the 1880s and the 1930s indigenous people continued to eke out traditional livings along the waterways and shorelines of Seattle's urbanizing and industrializing landscape. During those same years, however, the city's civic leaders and urban planners oversaw massive transformations of that landscape, including the creation of a ship canal linking Puget Sound with Lake Washington and the straightening of the Duwamish River. These transformations typified the modernizing ethos that sought to improve nature to ameliorate or even end social conflict. The struggle of the Duwamish and other local indigenous people to survive urban change, as well as the efforts by residents of nearby Indian reservations to maintain connections to places within the city, illustrate the complex, ironic legacies of Seattle's environmental history. They also show the ways in which urban and Native history are linked through both material and discursive practices.

volume

75

issue

1

pages

89-117

Date

2006

doi

10.1525/phr.2006.75.1.89

issn

0030-8684

uri

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/phr.2006.75.1.89

Is Part Of

State of the Salish Sea

Publisher

Pacific Historical Review