Coll Thrush, University of British Columbia

Profile photo of Coll Thrush, expert at University of British Columbia

Assistant Professor History Vancouver, British Columbia cthrush@interchange.ubc.ca Office: (604) 827-3623

Bio/Research

I am currently writing Indigenous London, a SSHRC-funded study which frames the city's history through the experiences of Indigenous people from territories that became the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who traveled - willingly or otherwise - to London. Papers I've presented based on thi...

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Bio/Research

I am currently writing Indigenous London, a SSHRC-funded study which frames the city's history through the experiences of Indigenous people from territories that became the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who traveled - willingly or otherwise - to London. Papers I've presented based on this research include "The Iceberg and the Cathedral: Place, Power, and Encounter in Inuit London" and "The Chief in the Churchyard, the Moon in his House, and the Ancestress in the Garden: Or, How Some Indigenous People Created Sacred Space at the Centre of Empire." Right now, I'm working on a chapter provisionally titled "A Dawnland Telescope: Algonquian People and Urban Knowledge Production in London, 1580-1640."

Along with literary scholar Jace Weaver (Cherokee), I am co-editing The Red Atlantic, a collection of essays about Indigenous people’s engagements with the emerging Atlantic World, 1500-1900. In addition to a co-authored introduction, I am contributing "The Iceberg and the Cathedral: Place, Power, and Encounter in Inuit London.”

I'm also writing a piece for Beyond Two Worlds, ed. Jim J. Buss and C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, a collected volume critiquing the notion of Indigenous people as being caught “between two worlds.” My contribution will be a “postlude” speaking to the merits and shortcomings of the “two worlds” framework when thinking about lived experiences in colonized territory: how does an emphasis on space and place inform and/or challenge the "two worlds" narrative?

Lastly, I’m working on an entry on Indigenous people and urbanization for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of American Indian History, edited by Fred Hoxie.

Before coming to UBC in 2005, I was a faculty member in the Program on the Environment at the University of Washington and spent three years working as a historian for the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe in my hometown of Auburn, Washington.



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