History student Jesse Thistle is one of four York graduate students who have been named recipients of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, one of the most prestigious graduate scholarships in Canada.
Recipients receive $50,000 annually for up to three years to support their doctoral research and are selected based on their leadership skills and high standards of scholarly achievement in the social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and engineering, or health-related fields.
Jesse Thistle
Jesse Thistle
History
Thistle’s thesis Indigence, Invisibility, and Indifference: Metis Life in Road Allowance Communities on the Canadian Prairies focuses on Indigenous narrative, memory, and storytelling as a way to rediscover history and identity. Centred on intergenerational trauma in Metis-Cree in the northern Great Plains, Thistle has built an oral history archive, a photo journal, and preserved community stories for posterity.
In addition to the Vanier, Thistle was also awarded a Trudeau Scholarship this year, with an annual value of $60,000 (including an annual travel allowance of $20,000) for up to four years. He is the first York scholar to be awarded both a Trudeau and a Vanier.
“My work on trauma is geared towards Indigenous community healing and moving forward; I do not study trauma for the spectacle of it, I want to understand trauma and help people recover identity and move forward in a good way, towards reconciliation,” he says.
“The goal of my research is to make Canadians aware of Metis road allowance history on the prairies in the 20th century. Most people I have talked to across the country do not even know what a road allowance community was, when they existed and who lived on them. I want to change that. I want people to better understand this chapter in Metis history, to make people see the resilience of my people.”
The work is very personal for Thistle. Looking at his own family history dating back to after the Riel Resistances of 1869 and 1885, it is his hope to bring about a greater understanding of impacts experienced by the Metis people to better inform how future generations can fight against, heal and overcome trauma.
Thistle says that winning both the Trudeau and Vanier opens many doors for him in terms of research support, travel and connecting with top scholars in the country – noting community as the true value of the award.
“In all, I guess I will keep doing what I am doing with my own Metis-Cree community and friends in Saskatchewan and Ontario, and I will keep writing my crazy stories and histories with my cat and wife Lucie by my side. And I know I will keep visiting and working with Randy, Nancy, and Jolene up at the Centre for Aboriginal Student Services (CASS). Those people work magic, truly. Go check them out. CASS helped make me into the person and scholar I am today – York is lucky to have such an Indigenous centre with such experts.”