Benjamin David, French Association for Canadian Studies, 2025 recipient of a Graduate Student Scholarship
Recipient Benjamin David Summer 2025 experiences in Western Canada led him to describe the country as a land of contrast and unsettling realities that he will return to for its natural beauty and cultural mosaic.
David, a doctoral student in the Department of English at Université Paul-Valéry in Montpellier, France, is working on a thesis project entitled “(Ad)dressing the Wounds of the Colonial Past: The Question of Reparation in Métis Fiction Written in English.”
He visited historic sites (Riel House, Lower Fort Garry, Batoche, Fort Edmonton and Métis Crossing), museums and university libraries in Winnipeg and Edmonton as well as time spent searching academic archives at the Universities of Manitoba and Alberta.
During his two months in the country, he was supported Matthew Tétreault from the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba supported David during his two months in the country.
“I read about and witnessed the consequences of the broken relationship between the Métis and Euro-Canadian communities. Cultural genocide, injustices and racial assumptions stir the defiance of Indigenous and white peoples, making Reconciliation an impossible task for now. Yet, I also witnessed the efforts of Indigenous communities to hold on and survive through the continuance of their knowledge, stories and traditions. Indigenous tourism and cultural manifestations are the result of this continuance that I attended to as a visitor, not as an ethnographer.”
He continued: “This trip has never been about extracting primary sources and imposing my conclusions to Indigenous researchers. Instead, I tried to listen to people and position myself as a guest in places where I managed to make relations that broadened and enriched my knowledge of Métis history, culture and literatures. Everything that was said, and everything that I witnessed is food for thought for my research project.”
David travelled to Seattle earlier this month for the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States Conference. “I’m trying to enlarge my research networks and get a clear picture of Canadian studies topics and how they somehow relate to the United States.”
In the future, he would like to travel south of the Canada-U.S. border to account for the suppressed Métis presence in Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, an experience that would allow him to further develop the transnational part of his research project on author Louise Erdrich.
Benjamin David photographs