INUVIK
Every summer she would make the trip to Tree River, the camp that had been in the family for more than a century, to learn how to make a fire and catch fish, and to just be a child.

Crystal Fraser dropped out of school in Grade 10. More than a decade later, she is in the process of completing her PhD in Canadian history. Her dissertation is on education and residential schooling in the Inuvik region. For Fraser, she wanted to create a research project that would benefit her Gwich'in culture, and focus on more recent history through oral interviews rather than wholly archival research. - photo courtesy of Crystal Fraser

She used to sit around the fire and listen to Julienne Andre tell family stories in Gwich'in.

Family is important to Fraser. Understanding the life of her great-grandmother and grandmother, Marka Bullock, has been an inspiration for her and has helped her reach the fifth year of her post-doctorate degree at the University of Alberta in Canadian history.

She left Inuvik in 1995 when her family moved to Edmonton and it wasn't long after that she dropped out of school in Grade 10 and moved out on her own. She eventually found her way back North to Yellowknife in 2003, working as a bartender and making money hand over fist.

It was at this time she realized she wanted more. She graduated from Sir John Franklin in 2004 with her high school diploma. She would work at the bar until the wee morning hours, get a few hours sleep, and head to the classroom full of 17 and 18-year-olds.

Her dissertation isn't just about researching Canadian history. For her, it holds personal meaning. Fraser has been compiling archival and oral history on education and residential schooling in the Inuvik region from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Knowing the elder women in her family experienced the attempted assimilation of aboriginals at the hands of the Canadian government and the Catholic church, Fraser is determined to expose in greater detail the lives of Gwich'in children during that 50-year period.

"In Canadian history, historians are obsessed with the distant past, but when we shift our gaze to recent history, we have experts sitting right in front of us that can shed light on so many things archives can't," she said.

Indeed, she said oral history isn't given much credit in historical analysis but in order to tell the story of residential schooling in the region it would be a disservice to the narrative to work solely from British and federal documentation - the colonial version of this time period is far from the absolute truth.

"I really feel like I was granted a responsibility to use their words in my work," she said.

Unlike most historians who focus on history that revolves around archival research alone, Fraser is more focused on incorporating oral history of Gwich'in people in her work, she said.

The more recent past, particularly aboriginal history, has been neglected by Canadian historians. And because of her focus, she's faced criticism from other historians who think her research has been overdone, or doesn't need to be researched.

One renowned British researcher even told her that the works she was doing was a waste of time.

Despite the criticism, she believes the work she is doing is important for her people and Canadians in general.

Her research looks at the issue of bodies and how health reshaped residential school students and female health including how it was controlled by the system - sports, leisure and Girl Guides - and regular everyday life of students. It also touches on sexual violence and assault.

When Inuvik was created in the 1950s, Fraser said segregation was obvious in both the community and how students were educated. Non-aboriginals lived better lives in the community and received higher-quality education than aboriginals, who were living in Northern slums and being educated for menial jobs.

"They viewed it as getting these people off the land and educating them," she said in a presentation to a room of Gwich'in elders on Feb. 3 in Inuvik, where she presented her research thus far. "We have to make them Canadians. They weren't creating leaders or premiers, it was about controlling the population."

The long-lasting, generational effect of residential schools can still be felt, she said, hinting at how it impacted her life growing up, and how it still does today. She views her research as an opportunity to better educate people - both aboriginal and non-aboriginal - of what the experience was really like in the words of people who lived through it.

Fraser knows her research, once published, won't be viewed as positive. The history of residential schools in the region is fraught with pain and suffering, loss of culture and dark experiences of sexual abuse and violence that, even generations later, still has its claws in families.

"A lot of people aren't going to be happy with what I write because they think we shouldn't talk about it," said Fraser. "In order for us to be more informed, we have to have a better working knowledge of what actually happened. If it makes you uncomfortable ... imagine what it was like for the people going through it.

When she was younger, an elder gave Fraser the Gwich'in name T'aih, which means "strength." This has proven to be foresight for what she would need as she made her way through her life.

"I hope I can inspire people to understand our history. That it is possible to find success. I'm a high school dropout and it is possible."

Fraser has been all over the world sharing her research and was recently one of 23 people selected to create a vision for Canada for the next 150 years of Confederation, a century-and-a-half after the original conference held in Charlottetown, P.E.I.