Professor of History at the University of the Fraser Valley, Keith is a Tier One Canada Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-Engaged History, who considers himself first and foremost an ethnohistorian.

Professor Carlson’s scholarship is designed and conducted in partnership with communities and aspires to answer questions that are of relevance to those communities. His interests include: Indigenous history, Indigenous historical consciousness, and the history of settler colonialism — especially in western Canada and north western USA. The approach he takes is to invert the classic scholarly gaze and to forefront the perspective of Indigenous partners. “So what intrigues me most is not the history of Indigenous people in Canadian or American history, but the history of Canadian and American society within Indigenous histories,” offers Carlson.

His focus is on the history of the Coast Salish of British Columbia and Washington and has worked extensively with Hukbalahap veterans in the Philippines.