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This native woman was priced out of Seattle – to a city named for Christopher Columbus.

caption: The Seattle skyline, seen across the water.
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The Seattle skyline, seen across the water.
Flickr Photo/Shelly Provost (CC BY 2.0)/flic.kr/p/VEhbc2

Essayist Elissa Washuta spent last summer in the Fremont Bridge. The old control room was turned into an office, which allowed her to sit over the water and write. Elissa is descended from the Cowlitz and Cascade people. The longer she looked at the shipping canal, the less she could separate it from the displacement of the Duwamish people in service of progress and growth.

Seattle is in a new wave of growth, with similar implications for those who were here before, including the Coast Salish peoples. On a visit back to Seattle from Columbus, Ohio, Elissa joined Bill Radke for a conversation on the flow of water – and people – in and out of this city.

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