From: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Date published: 9/29/2025 11:00:00 AM | Date modified: 9/29/2025 11:00:00 AM
Labrador Inuk artist and storyteller Kate Forest telling a story at a university event.
Photo: sweetmoon photography
The stories that Kristina Bidwell’s grandmother told her over supper inspire her to this day. She remembers eating moose or caribou and “really good bread” while her grandmother would recount stories—like the time one of their Inuk ancestors escaped uninjured from a polar bear attack. The bear opened its mouth, and the woman grabbed a stick, put her mitt on the end of it, and shoved it down the bear’s throat.
“It’s a real story of courage,” Bidwell says. “It’s always spoken to me, saying not to turn and run in hard moments.”
Storytelling is an engaging, accessible way to deepen connections and foster empathy—but for years, Indigenous stories were mostly shared among family members and went untold in the wider Canadian public.
Bidwell is seeking to change that. She is an English professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Storytelling, and a member of NunatuKavut, which represents the Southern Inuit community in Labrador. Her research program has two main goals: uplift Indigenous voices and use storytelling as a way to expand reconciliation.
“People don’t think of stories as this powerful thing. They’re seen as kind of soft,” Bidwell says. “Yet, they can be so powerful. They’re a way of standing your ground. Storytelling can bring complexity to that notion of reconciliation, and bring a lot of different voices to it.”
As Canada marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30, most Canadians are now aware of the horrors of the residential school system; but sometimes that’s still the extent of their knowledge of contemporary Indigenous history.
Chelsea Belcourt (speaking) presenting on a Métis panel at the Gabriel Dumont Institute.
Photo: Indigenous Literary Studies Association
“There is a wide range of ways that settler colonialism has impacted Indigenous Peoples,” Bidwell says. “What we’re trying to do in our research is expand the notion of reconciliation.”
In her work, Bidwell currently focuses on the Métis community in the Prairies, where she lives, and Indigenous Peoples in Newfoundland and Labrador, where she grew up. Both groups were left out of the official Truth and Reconciliation Commission, because theIndian Actdidn’t cover them. Bidwell wants to bring more attention to their stories and create more awareness around the long Indigenous history in urban areas like Saskatoon and St. John’s.
The public narrative still tends to be that Indigenous people come to urban areas from somewhere else.
“Our cities are seen as settler spaces, but actually, Indigenous People have been living in cities and on the land where cities were built forever,” she says.
Bidwell’s goals for her research include improving Indigenous-settler collaborations; deepening Canadians’ understanding of urban spaces as Indigenous spaces; and training the next generation of Indigenous scholars.
She invited Chelsea Belcourt, a Métis / Coast Salish writer from Alberta, to work with her on her research projects, and offered to supervise Belcourt’s completion of her PhD.
“I enthusiastically said yes,” Belcourt says.
Belcourt’s PhD research is focused on contemporary Métis literature that retells the past, “using our voice to retell our history in an anticolonial sense,” she explains. Belcourt shares the professor’s passion for bringing Indigenous stories to a wider audience. Even as a Millennial, she wasn’t taught Indigenous texts or stories in school.
“In primary and secondary school, I was never, ever taught an Indigenous text. It wasn’t until second year of undergrad that I discovered The Break by Katherena Vermette,” Belcourt says. “It was super validating for me, just to be able to finally see myself on a page, as an Indigenous person in an urban setting.”
Both Bidwell and Belcourt have seen firsthand how Indigenous stories can captivate non-Indigenous students and draw them into wider conversations.
Kristina Bidwell (right) and co-author Sophie McCall working with a group to create a quilt together as part of a project on Indigenous collaboration.
Photo: Leah Alfred-Olmedo
When she first started teaching at the University of Saskatchewan in the early 2000s, Bidwell encountered resistance from students who didn’t see the value in learning Indigenous stories—but not anymore.
“There is much more openness from non-Indigenous students now,” Bidwell says. “An English class is actually a great place to have those conversations, because it’s focused around stories and human lives instead of abstract issues.”
Belcourt emphasizes that getting more Indigenous people into teaching roles, including at the primary and secondary school level, will help uplift Indigenous voices and expand Canadians’ understanding of reconciliation. She remembers receiving a warm welcome when she taught an Indigenous Literature course at St. Mary’s University in Calgary.
“The feedback that I got from the students was overwhelmingly about how special it was to be taught Métis literature by a Métis person, who can tell stories from [their] own family that make them understand the text more,” she says.
Additionally, collaborations between nations (and with settlers) could help Indigenous stories find a wider audience. For example, as part of activities around the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Belcourt’s new play Back to the Treaty will get its first public reading, in her hometown of Calgary. It’s a collaboration between her and two Elders from Siksika Nation, bringing together her younger, funny voice and their knowledge. In it, two friends go back in time and meet with Chief Crowfoot before the signing of Treaty 7.
“I had to do a ton of research and really take my time, sitting with these Elders and learning,” she says. “It worked out to be lovely and I’m really proud of it.”
Belcourt’s work points to the value of expanding the definition of storytelling, Bidwell says.
“I love books, but there are many ways of lifting up voices,” Bidwell says. “Videos, art exhibits, museum exhibits, public signage, walking tours, classroom visits, public murals. There are all kinds of amazing ways to tell stories outside the written narrative.”
To find out more about Kristina Bidwell’s research work, see her University of Saskatchewan faculty profile page.
