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, eleven 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 twentieth century.
Crystal Gail Fraser is Gwichyà Gwich’in and has Scottish and English ancestry. Originally from Inuvik and Dachan Choo Gę̀hnjik (Tree River), Northwest Territories, Crystal works as a historian and Indigenous studies scholar in the amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton) region, on Treaty 6 and Métis Lands.
On October 29, the 2024 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize winner, John Vaillant, read from Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast to a full house at Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore.
The J.W. Dafoe Book Prize is worth $12,000, and is formally awarded at the J.W. Dafoe Foundation’s Book Prize Event this fall in Winnipeg.
During his tenure at the Manitoba Free Press, later renamed the Winnipeg Free Press, from 1901-1944, Dafoe was known for his advocacy of western development, free trade, national independence, and the British Commonwealth.
Plundering the North
“This captivating book, recasts an oft-told tale but in a new light. The search for Franklin’s grave has gripped historians and the public for decades but McGoogan presents a fresh view of the mystery of his disappearance. Searching for Franklin reveals the lethal hubris of an English Navy man who killed hundreds of people, ignored the advice of Indigenous locals, and enjoyed the posthumous status of a hero. The book also masterfully situates Franklin’s last journeys against a lifetime of colonial work.”
