Comekala & Ranald MacDonald

The Western History Lecture Series presents Dr. Joshua L. Reid, the John Calhoun Smith Memorial Endowed Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest at University of Washington.

This presentation examines how Comekala, a Mowachaht from Vancouver Island, and Ranald MacDonald, a Chinook from the Columbia River, shaped history through their explorations of the Pacific during the long nineteenth century. Separately, their ocean-spanning mobilities exemplify their efforts at shaping Indigenous futures while bringing the people and places of the Pacific Ocean into world history.

Joshua L. Reid (citizen of the Snohomish Indian Nation) is an associate professor of American Indian Studies and the John Calhoun Smith Memorial Endowed Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, where he directs the Center for the Study of the PNW. His research interests include American Indians, identity formation, cultural meanings of space and place, the American and Canadian Wests, the environment, and the Indigenous Pacific.

His publications include _The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs_ (Yale 2015) and the co-edited inaugural special issue, “Histories of Resilience,” of the _American Historical Review_.