To watch the documentary, go here.
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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. What defines our Pacific Northwest coast? Sure, its rugged beauty, its fog banks and endless sand dunes all help define it, but there's something else that has defined the Oregon and Washington coast for centuries - shipwrecks. Our coast is well known as the Graveyard of the Pacific, the last resting place for hundreds and hundreds of rotting skeletons of ships and boats large and small. Today on the show, you'll hear from Anna king of Northwest Public Broadcasting about her new documentary “Wrecked Sinking Ships And Colliding Cultures.” In it, King weaves the story of how European settlers came into contact with indigenous peoples, first because of shipwrecks, many times indigenous peoples rescuing those settlers from their doomed ships. It's a documentary about a few instances of cultural harmony, but also many occurrences of brutal clashes. We're going to play the first couple minutes of the documentary now so you can get a sense of this story.
Documentary introduction plays:
MICHAEL DUNNE: Anna King, senior correspondent with Northwest Public Broadcasting, who you often hear on our air filing stories about the Pacific Northwest. Anna, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
ANNA KING: Thanks for having me. Michael.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Before I even get into the documentary, I would love to ask you, why did you want to make this?
ANNA KING: You know, I was at this presentation about in 2020, where I met the author of the book WRECKED by Cole Thrush, and I was at Sacajawea historical State Park, and he was giving this talk under a tree, and it was just, you know, just so interesting. And when I learned more about what he was doing. He was about halfway done with his project at that point, his book. And I was just really listening to him talking about this new book that he was working on. And I just thought it was fascinating, both the history of these shipwrecks on our own coast, but also their relation to the tribes in the northwest, that indigenous people were bombarded with ship after ship of all different kinds of people from many countries and customs and behavior, and also the hospitality shown to many foreign sailors who were wrecked and there were also these tragic accounts where Native Americans were blamed for shipwrecks, like the William and Anne in 1829 where men from Fort Vancouver blamed the ship sinking on the Clatsop people and bombed their village, and the tribe was not to blame. The ship simply wrecked and all the sailors perished, but so did many indigenous people in the attacks that were subsequent.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah. You know, when I watched it, I thought it's beautifully shot, but it tells a bit of a dark tale as well. And you've already started, but continue explaining to our listeners, kind of what this what this story tells them?
ANNA KING: Yeah, a lot of the story is about this area of the Pacific Ocean called the graveyard of the Pacific, which is really, you know, on both the Washington and Oregon coast, in an area that's near the mouth of the Columbia River, and very dangerous, but it stretches, you know, quite a bit north and quite a bit south. And this area has just huge, gnarly currents, standing waves, wicked storms, shifting sandbars and a rocky shore, all just waiting for sailors. And also, you know, in this documentary, viewers will learn about the vibrancy of Native American tribes that live on the northwest coast, and despite this difficult history that they have withstood, they're still with us, and they're still sovereign nations, and they have a rich culture still today.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And of course, the documentary called “Wrecked, Sinking Ships and Colliding Cultures.” Talk about that second part of the title about colliding cultures, because obviously we think we know a lot of the history about conflict and challenges between European settlers and the indigenous people, but, boy, this is really kind of a very interesting take on that.
ANNA KING: Yeah, it is, for sure. And you know, it must have been surreal, possibly, to be a Native American person and encounter a Russian ship with Russian sailors one day and then another week, or a week and a half later, you know, encountered Spaniards or French. You know, all of these cultures and people had very different, you know, wants and goals and cultures. And for the Native Americans, it must have been sort of like whiplash to just not know what's coming down the pike in this time when many ships were arriving on our coast, and it's interesting, too, the way that the Native Americans kind of viewed this time. They told me that in the Chinook Indian nation, the chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation told me that before these ships were arriving in such great force that Native American people would send very special people with special powers. He told me to go to the coast and they would sing in whales. And when the whales would arrive on the coast and wash up on shore, they had a special way of marking these animals to claim the best pieces of blubber, or the best pieces of meat off of the animal. And so that was because they were a sovereign nation, he told me, and so anything that washed up on their shores was theirs, and they viewed these ships much like a big whale that came ashore, in the same way that it was a big pile of resources that came to shore, and their nation was going to benefit from it, and so that might have come as a surprise to the foreigners that were in those ships. And so that created some sort of conflict, but also some cooperation. In some cases, there are a lot of stories of Native American tribes saving with their canoes or saving from the shore folks that were washed up on the shore, even caring for them for many months before they could be reunited with a Western settlement or another ship. So, there was both tragedy and some good stories that came out of these.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Anna, I've talked to several documentary filmmakers before, and I know it's a challenge. It's hard to make a documentary, and I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell us about some of the challenges and how you overcame them. And I think within that question, you're known to our audience as an audio producer. We hear you on the radio, take us through almost in some ways, changing mediums a little bit, and doing something that you know is your normal course of work, providing an audio story – that is both video and audio.
ANNA KING: Oh, for sure, you know, I just view myself as a storyteller, and I really don't mind you know what platform that comes on, if that's an Instagram story, a full-length feature documentary, like my recent project, not one drop of blood or a short film like Billy's Magic that I completed about a year ago. These are all just lovely stories, and I just work to tell them in the best way possible. But it is true that I've been doing some more films than I used to. And I think what is common amongst all these stories, including my podcast called Ghost Heard, is that there's a bit of mystery, there's a bit of unresolved nature to these stories, and they all reside in the northwest. So, if it's a Northwest story, it has a bit of mystery and it is interesting to me. I throw my weight behind it and try to make the best product that I can for audiences. You know, you asked about challenges, and one of the challenges that I've had on this film in particular was just my own gosh darn fault. I grew up in the northwest. I grew up in western Washington, so I know the weather can change, and I know how fast that can happen, and I should have known better, but I looked at all of the weather very carefully before departing Eastern Washington and going over to the coast. And it said, you know, it's calling for 90s, 95 you know. So, I packed accordingly. I got all my, you know, light summer gear, my UV sun shirts out wide brim hats I was ready for the sun, and a lot of different sun screen options in my bag. And then when we got to the coast the second day, it just turned cold. It was, you know, near 50 degrees, oh boy, and just bitterly cold with fog and light rain and drizzle, and it became very challenging to stay outdoors, because what I had was a sweatshirt and a wide brim hat. And so, we did the very best we could, and we had, you know, continual shoots all day long. There wasn't much chance to get dry or get warm. I remember eating clam strips and fries in a basket at this little cafe and just shivering because we were all so cold, and we were all trying to gulp down hot tea, and just props to my crew, because they also were underdressed for the weather that we encountered. But they kept going, and we got the shots that we needed for this documentary. And as you'll notice if you watch the documentary, this was shot in the middle of summer, but it was, it looks like October, you know, it looks it looks really stormy and really foggy, and it has a quiet coloring of the whole film because of those beautiful coastal colors, and I just with that little bit of complaining there, Michael, you know, ultimately, it's just a joy to do this work, and it's a joy to be able to tell a beautiful story in a way that is really gorgeous. And I don't really have much to complain about.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Well, what I find interesting, too, and just listening to you now and looking at the documentary, and I think a lot of folks may not grasp this, but I wanted to obviously ask you, is you talk about the propensity for shipwrecks throughout history, and this is such a dangerous part, you know, the Pacific Northwest coast, and claiming these ships from, you know, 100 200 years gone by. But of course, it's still a dangerous stretch of coastline, isn't it? I mean, even with ships and with the latest technology. You know, shipwrecks didn't just stop in the 1800s or early 1900s they happened today, because this still is a very, very dangerous part of the western United States coastline.
ANNA KING: You're so correct. And that's really an astute takeaway that I was hoping people would take away from our film is that this is still a very it's a very treacherous coast, and for ships, even with all of our technology and all of our safeguards and everything that everybody's doing and the Bar Pilots that rove the Columbia River mouth, and everybody that tries to make sure everything goes right, there's still the great potential for a disaster. And all it would take would be one container of oil wrecking on our shores. And we all know how treacherous and horrible that could be. And we've seen recent accidents, even containers full of Nike tennis shoes that exploded into the ocean and washed up on shore for years. So, I think it's very present in our time now that there could be more shipwrecks, and we just have to have a great, great respect for the mouth of the Columbia River and our Pacific Ocean.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, you know, this last question about things happening in the past, but still happening in the future. And I want to talk about, you interviewed historian Cole Thrush, and he talked about the fact that, again, with the title being colliding cultures, that it happened many, many years ago, with the indigenous people and the European settlers colliding, literally, sometimes with regard to shipwrecks. But he talks about how this collision of cultures still happens today. Talk about that because I think that that's maybe the biggest takeaway is that there's still both goodwill and scars from the collision of cultures.
ANNA KING: Yeah, Michael, you know if, if your listeners haven't read the book “WRECKED Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific by Cole thrush, I would highly recommend the book. It's just a beautiful read, and it really inspired this whole project. And you know, when we talk about the entanglement of living with this history and also the future together as different people thrown together in the northwest. You know, indigenous people just didn't disappear. I think many settlers or colonists might have thought that they were just going to go away, or they would just be able to take over all the lands, and really the indigenous people. Are still here, and there's ongoing attempts to recognize treaties in the Northwest, and it's so it's very much unwritten history. Still, there's a lot of ways that this business is unfinished, and it's an ongoing relationship with each other, and there is no end to this encounter between different cultures and legal systems that happened in our Great Northwest.
MICHAEL DUNNE: She's Anna King, senior correspondent with Northwest Public Broadcasting, talking about her new documentary, wrecked sinking ships and colliding cultures. Anna, really appreciate the great job on the documentary. Really appreciate you coming on and talking with us.
ANNA KING: Thank you so much for having me. It's just a wonder and just a wonderful opportunity to speak with you and your KLCC audience.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, Senator Ron Wyden stops by to talk about the government shutdown and more chaos at the federal level. I'm Michael Dunne, host of On the Record, thanks for listening.
