Part of the Northwest Coast is often referred to as the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” That's because it's home to thousands of shipwrecks. NWPB's Anna King talks with host Phineas Pope about our new short documentary, "Wrecked: Sinking Ships & Colliding Cultures on the Northwest Coast."
Phineas Pope: Hey Anna.
Anna King: Hey Finn!
Pope: Bring us back in time with you. What's going on in the world when ships are off the Northwest Coast? What are they carrying?
King: This was kind of like an age of imperial competition. Basically, the British, the Spanish, other countries, Canadians and Americans are all fighting over the same kind of stuff, like the natural resources and things to be found in North America.
They were bringing things like cloth, silk, buttons, guns, and they were taking things away from North America, like furs. And later in the 20th century, they were bringing ballast, lumber, oil, and it was just kind of a, “let's grab everything we can,” kind of time, which is why they were risking so much in these hazardous, dangerous waters.
Pope: And why are so many ships crashing on the Graveyard of the Pacific?
King: You know, Ryen Nielsen says it best, he's an interpretive specialist for the Cape Disappointment State Park. We have him in our documentary here.
Documentary Tape — Ryen Nielsen: It's an absolutely powerful meeting of both the river and the ocean. The currents in both are intense. So, when you have two currents that are really, really strong and really, really big waves, and lots of sand, it's just a recipe for disaster.
Pope: Talk a little bit about the inspiration for this film. It goes far beyond the ships themselves, right?
King: Yeah. You know, the first time I heard about Coll Thrush’s book, which our film is based off of, I was sitting in Sacajawea (Historical State) Park on the confluence of the Snake and the Columbia rivers, and I was listening to him speak with a Native American friend of mine. And as soon as I heard the premise of the book, like shipwrecks on the Northwest Coast and how they shaped both the colonizing culture and that of sovereign Native American tribes, I knew I had to do something.
And Coll's book is just a wonderful read and it lays out an argument, that is the retelling of shipwreck tales. He highlights the ways that the myths of settler colonialism and how they wove that into our history and culture.
Pope: And in the film we learn about Indigenous traditions, and in that, things washing ashore. For example, the person who would find a beached whale would get the best cut of blubber or meat. How does that tradition, for example, translate to shipwrecks?
King: Tony Johnson, who's the chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation, tells about this in our new film. He says that back in the days before colonial ships were washing in, Indigenous people from his tribes would ‘sing in’ whales to the beach, and when they found a whale, they'd mark it to claim it. They'd get these choice cuts of blubber and meat.
Documentary tape — Tony A. (naschio) Johnson: That tradition has a relevance to … the way we thought about shipwrecks or anything else that came ashore.
King: As a sovereign nation they took them and used parts from them with these ships landing on their shore.
Pope: And settlers and colonists had this false notion that Indigenous people would just disappear. What were the interactions like when ships would crash on Indigenous land?
King: In this book and in our documentary, we talk about some of the ships needing help. Some sailors were rescued by the tribes. Some sailors were cared for by the tribes during the winter until they could be reunited with Western outposts or different ships.
You know, that would've cost the tribes a lot to carry another few people with their own people through the winter, which is a hard time for food. When other ships went down, colonial people blamed the tribes for those deaths, even though in many cases the tribes had nothing to do with that.
And in one case, a Native American village was blamed and bombed for downing the ship, William And Ann, and the Clatsop village was bombed. This all happened in 1829. More than 25 people were killed in the shipwreck, but then Clatsop people were also killed and injured. But the Clatsop just had nothing to do with that shipwreck, as I mentioned before.
Pope: Anna, tell us a bit what it was like filming this project.
King: Yeah, Finn, you know, it was just terribly gratifying to work with all of these people who have such astute knowledge of the history and were able to kind of reframe it into something that we maybe didn't learn in school but is more aligned with the truth of what happened.
Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.
