Ethnohistory 2009 56(4):699-731; DOI:10.1215/00141801-2009-027
Duke University Press
"You See Your Culture Coming Out of the Ground Like a Power": Uncanny Narratives in Time and Space on the Northwest Coast
Colleen E. Boyd
Ball State University
In 2003, construction began on a graving dock that would bring marine projects to the Olympic Peninsula and provide family-wage jobs. It appeared to be a good fit for the city of Port Angeles, Washington, and its surrounding communities. Shortly after construction began, workers unearthed an approximately 2,700–year-old Coast Salish village and cemetery, claimed by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe as an ancestral site. Significantly, indigenous reports of being haunted by the spirits of their disturbed ancestors and nonnative desires to bury the past and move forward resulted in intercultural conflicts and misunderstandings. Such struggles speak to the contested nature of history and the deeply rooted concerns about the region's socioeconomic future following the decline of natural resource industries.

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Copyright 2009 by American Society for Ethnohistory