Education, Religion and Colonialism: The Complex History of Indian Residential Schooling in Canada

Date:: Monday 18th October 2021
Time:: 4pm-5pm
Venue:: Online via Zoom

Dr Crystal Gail Fraser is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Classics & Religion and The Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta (Canada). In this seminar, she presents her pioneering research, By Strength, We Are Still Here (or T’aihk’ìighe’ tth’aih zhit dìidìch’ùh).

Conducting 75 oral interviews, Dr Fraser uncovers and reconstructs parts of Indian residential schooling’s complex history in the Inuvik Region, Canada between 1959 and 1982. Originally from Inuvik and the first-ever Gwichyà Gwich’in to earn a doctorate degree in History, her work makes a significant contribution to letting Indigenous people speak for themselves in Canadian history, and to bringing a Gich’in lens to these histories.

This seminar would be of particular interest to anyone interested in the fields of Education, History, Indigenous Studies, Post-colonial studies, Religious Studies and Catholic Education.

Dr Crystal Gail Fraser
University of Alberta, Canada

Crystal Gail Fraser is Gwichyà Gwich’in and originally from Inuvik and Dachan Choo Gę̀hnjik in the Northwest Territories. Crystal’s doctorate makes a strong contribution to how scholars engage with Indigenous research methodologies and theoretical concepts, our understanding of Indigenous histories during the second half of the twentieth century, and how Northern Canada was unique in relation to the rest of the settler nation. Completed in 2019, her doctoral dissertation was awarded the 2020 John Bullen Prize by the Canadian Historical Association.

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