Curriculum Vitae

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2010-2019 PhD, History, University of Alberta 

Dissertation Title: “T’aih k’ìighe’ tth’aih zhit dìidìch’ùh (By Strength, We Are Still Here): Indigenous Northerners Confronting Hierarchies of Power at Day and Residential Schools in Nanhkak Thak (the Inuvik Region, Northwest Territories), 1959 to 1982”

2009-10 Masters of Arts, History, University of Victoria

Thesis: “Cultural Perplexities: Non-Aboriginal Representations of Dene Women in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” 

2004-08 Bachelor of Arts, History Major, Religious Studies Minor, University of Alberta

2025- Co-Director, Critical Approaches to Indigenous Relationality, Prairie Indigenous Relationality Network, University of Alberta

2024- Associate Professor, Department of History, Classics, and Religion, Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta

2022-2025 Founding Member, National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada

2021-2025  Director (Gwich’in Tribal Council Representative), Gwich’in Council International

2020-2025 Member, Governing Circle, National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, University of Manitoba.

2020-2024 Assistant Professor, Department of History, Classics, and Religion, Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta

2022-2023 Special Advisor to the Dean on Indigenous Initiatives, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta

 2025 The CHA Best Scholarly Book Prize in Canadian History, Canadian Historical Association for By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schools in Inuvik, Northwest Territories  

2025 The CLIO North Prize, Canadian Historical Association for By Strength, We Are Still Here

2025 Best First Book Prize, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association for By Strength, We Are Still Here

2025 King Charles III Coronation Medal for the Northwest Territories, The Governor General of Canada  

2025  Finalist, Robert Kroetsch – City of Edmonton Book Prize, Edmonton Arts Council for By Strength, We Are Still Here

2025  Honorable Mention, The Indigenous History Book Prize, Canadian Historical Association, for By Strength, We Are Still Here

2022 Distinguished Academic Early Career Award, Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations  

2024  Honorable Mention, Emerging Community-Based Researcher, Community-Based Research Canada  

2020  John Bullen Prize, Canadian Historical Association  

(University of Manitoba Press, 2024)

In By Strength, We Are Still Here,  Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser offers a groundbreaking and personal history of Indian Residential Schooling in the Northwest Territories—one rooted in the voices, experiences, and resilience of Indigenous northerners themselves.

Set in the community of Inuvik, the book traces the creation and legacy of two federally funded institutions: Grollier Hall (Catholic) and Stringer Hall (Anglican). Drawing from oral histories, archival records, and community collaboration, Fraser reconstructs the lived realities of children who were sent to these schools from across the North—from the Mackenzie Delta to the High Arctic. She foregrounds their strength, humour, and endurance amid a system designed to erase Indigenous identities, languages, and relationships to land.

Through stories of family separation, resistance, and survivance, By Strength, We Are Still Here reveals how Indigenous peoples in the North endured—and continue to confront—the violence of colonial schooling. Fraser’s narrative challenges southern-focused accounts of residential schooling by centring northern geographies, Arctic colonialism, and community knowledge, offering one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind.

At once scholarly and intimate, the book weaves together testimony, archival fragments, and land-based memory to show that survival was not accidental—it was an act of collective strength, care, and love. By connecting historical injustices to ongoing struggles for justice, the book illuminates how the legacies of residential schooling continue to shape life, healing, and governance across the North today.

Winner of the Clio Prize for the North, the Best Scholarly Book in Indigenous History Award, and the Best First Book Prize from the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), By Strength, We Are Still Here stands as a powerful testament to Indigenous endurance, truth-telling, and the ongoing work of reconciliation in Canada.

(HarperCollins, 2025)

Talk Treaty to Me is an essential and easy-to-read guide to treaties, Indigenous sovereignty, and land for all Canadians. Co-authored by Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser and Dr. Sara Komarnisky, the book invites readers into a grounded and relational conversation about the past, present, and future of treaty relationships in Canada.

Treaties cover most of the lands we now call Canada. Some were established thousands of years ago among Indigenous Peoples and with the Land and animals, while others were negotiated after the arrival of Europeans. These agreements make it possible for all of us to live, work, play, and profit on these Lands, while profoundly shaping the relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

In Talk Treaty to Me, Fraser and Komarnisky untangle the complexities of treaties and offer a path toward deeper understanding of our shared rights, roles, and responsibilities. Through clear, concise, and engaging storytelling grounded in scholarly research, the book explores:

• Treaties among and between Indigenous Peoples;
• The history of treaty-making between Indigenous Nations and the Crown, from early agreements to contemporary times;
• Concepts such as Métis scrip, modern land claims, self-government agreements, Indigenous sovereignty, and unceded territory;
• The (dis)honouring of treaties and the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism;
• How Canadian borders and laws interrupt Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood;
• Insights from gendered and queer perspectives on treaty and land;
• The politics and responsibilities of land acknowledgements; and
• The role of reconciliation and the Land Back movement today.

With timelines, maps, and photographs throughout, Talk Treaty to Me is both a primer and a provocation.  At once accessible and profound, Talk Treaty to Me reminds readers that treaties are not relics of history, but living agreements that bind us all. It challenges Canadians to ask not how to live on treaty land, but how to live in good relation with it.

(Podcast series and community history project)

How I Survived is a community-driven podcast that explores how Indigenous children, families, and communities in the Canadian North lived, learned, and found strength in the face of the Indian Residential and Day School systems. Co-created and co-led by Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser and Dr. Jessica Dunkin of the Northwest Territories Recreation and Parks Association, the series uncovers stories of sport, play, and recreation as vital acts of resistance, creativity, and survivance.

Across seven episodes—one introduction and six powerful Survivor stories—How I Survived draws on oral histories, archival research, and community memory to tell a different kind of residential school story. The series honours the humour, joy, and resilience that coexisted alongside the trauma of colonial schooling. Listeners hear directly from Survivors who describe how hockey, baseball, sewing, and music became small but meaningful ways to endure, connect, and heal.

Produced by the Northwest Territories Recreation and Parks Association, the podcast centres Indigenous voices and community-based storytelling to create space for listening, learning, and reflection. Each episode weaves together lived experience and historical context, linking personal narratives to ongoing movements for truth, justice, and reconciliation.

The podcast is part of a larger public history initiative that includes live listening events, educational resources for schools and community organizations, scholarly publications and presentations, and an ongoing and active research agenda.

Accessible, moving, and deeply grounded in northern experience, How I Survived reminds listeners that survival was never passive—it was, and continues to be, an act of collective strength, love, and imagination.

Coming soon.

2018-  Present          Writers’ Guild of Alberta

2012- Present           Native American and Indigenous Studies Association

2012-  Present          Canadian Committee on Women’s History

2010-  Present          Canadian Historical Association

• English (Mother Tongue)
• French- Basic reading/ writing/ oral ability
• Latin- Basic reading/ writing ability
• Dinjii Zhuh Ginjik- Basic oral and reading comprehension