Panelists to Discuss Settler Violence and Colonialism in the Pacific Northwest Sept. 26

A panel of historians and educators will discuss “Making and Unmaking Histories of Settler Violence and Colonialism in the Pacific Northwest,” at 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019, in Western Libraries Special Collections, Wilson 6.

The event is free and open to the public.

Through a facilitated discussion, panelists will explore such questions as, How have communities, indigenous, and non-indigenous peoples narrated and contested stories of settler colonialism in the Pacific Northwest? What are the responsibilities of historians and educators as they explore and present these narratives? 

Panelists will be:

• Marc Carpenter, a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Oregon. Carpenter’s research interests are U.S. history, Native American history, and the history of memory. His dissertation is provisionally titled “Memory and Erasure of Settler Violence in the Early Northwest, 1849-1929.” This research explores the violence of American conquest and colonization in the Pacific Northwest, as well as the mechanics of mythmaking that followed.
• Josh Cerretti, associate professor of history and women, gender and sexuality studies. Cerretti’s research interests include sexuality, race, and gender in modern U.S. history. In 2015, he was awarded a Diversity and Social Justice Committee Institutional Transformation grant to develop and guide the “Decolonizing Bellingham’s History Tour.” His monograph, “Abuses of the Erotic: Militarizing Sexuality in the Post-Cold War United States,” was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019.
• Michelle Vendiola, a member of the Walker River Paiute Tribe of Nevada who lives with her family on the Lummi Indian Nation. Vendiola is a community organizer with the Red Line Salish Sea, an indigenous-led organizing group focused on the protection of water, land, and air in the region. She has worked in education from Head Start through the university level as a teacher, faculty member, and administrator. She has always called herself an activist, and believes in empowering Native youth and community members with the tools to overcome historical trauma to bring about community change.
• Jennifer Seltz, associate professor of history, will moderate. Seltz serves on the James W. Scott Fellowship Review Committee and her research focuses on the environmental and cultural history of epidemic disease in the North American West.

This talk is co-sponsored by Western Libraries Heritage Resources and Western’s Department of History, and is offered as part of the Heritage Resources Distinguished Speakers program and the James W. Scott Regional Research Fellowship. The Scott Fellowship is awarded annually to scholars who conduct significant research using archival holdings at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies (CPNWS), a unit of Western Libraries Heritage Resources. Funds are in honor of the late Dr. James W. Scott, a noted scholar of the Pacific Northwest region, and a founder and first director of CPNWS. Carpenter and Cerretti are both recipients of the 2019 Scott Fellowship.

For more information about this event, please contact the Director of Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Elizabeth.Joffrion@wwu.edu (360) 650-3283.