Crystal Gail Fraser is Gwichyà Gwich’in (and of English-Scottish ancestry), originally from Inuvik, Northwest Territories. She holds a PhD in Canadian history and is an associate professor in history and Native studies at the University of Alberta. Fraser is a community-engaged scholar of Indian residential schooling histories and recently published the historical monograph By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, winner of the Canadian Historical Association’s Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize, the Clio Prize for the North, and the 2025 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Scholarly Research. She lives in Edmonton.
An easy-to-read and essential guide to treaties, Indigenous Sovereignity, and land for all Canadians.
Treaties cover much of Canada. Some were established thousands of years ago, with land and animals, and others date back to the time when Europeans first arrived in North America. These agreements make it possible for all of us to live, work, play, and profit on these Lands. Additionally, treaties have profoundly shaped the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. In Talk Treaty to Me: Understanding the Basics of Treaties and Land in Canada, Crystal Gail Fraser and Sara Komarnisky untangle the complexities of treaties and set forth a path to a greater understanding of all our roles, rights, and responsibilities.
In this accessible, clear, and concise book, they discuss:
With a quick-reference timeline, maps, and black-and-white photographs throughout, Talk Treaty to Me concludes with a call to action and specific, tangible steps that all of us can take every day to support truth and reconciliation.
The first comprehensive study of Indian residential schools in the North
In this ground-breaking book, Crystal Gail Fraser draws on Dinjii Zhuh (Gwich’in) concepts of individual and collective strength to illuminate student experiences in northern residential schools, revealing the many ways Indigenous communities resisted the institutionalization of their children.
After 1945, federal bureaucrats and politicians increasingly sought to assimilate Indigenous northerners—who had remained comparatively outside of their control—into broader Canadian society through policies that were designed to destroy Indigenous ways of life. Foremost among these was an aggressive new schooling policy that mandated the construction of Grollier and Stringer Halls: massive residential schools that opened in Inuvik in 1959, 11 years after a special joint committee of the House of Commons and the Senate recommended that all residential schools in Canada be closed.
By Strength, We Are Still Here shares the lived experiences of Indigenous northerners from 1959 until 1982, when the territorial government published a comprehensive plan for educational reform. Led by Survivor testimony, Fraser shows the roles both students and their families played in disrupting state agendas, including questioning and changing the system to protect their cultures and communities.
Centring the expertise of Knowledge Keepers, By Strength, We Are Still Here makes a crucial contribution to Indigenous research methodologies and to understandings of Canadian and Indigenous histories during the second half of the 20th century.
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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