Claire Thomson is a field historian for Parks Canada’s Indigenous Affairs and Cultural Heritage Directorate. Her research interests are rooted in the Wood Mountain Uplands of southern Saskatchewan, challenging colonial containers of Lakota lands and movement while centring Lakota kinship and language. She is also interested in the history of Indigenous agriculture, land, and food relationships on the prairies more broadly and living with those knowledge systems in the present. She holds a PhD from the University of Alberta, and she was the recipient of the Governor General’s Gold Medal for her dissertation in 2022. Claire splits her time between Saskatchewan and South Dakota where her boyfriend, Corey Yellow Boy, resides. She lives in the Wood Mountain area, ranching with her family and volunteering as the secretary for the Wood Mountain Historical Society.
Contact:
claire.thomson@pc.gc.ca
Select Work:
“Digging Roots and Remembering Relatives: Lakota Kinship and Movement in the Northern Great Plains from the Wood Mountain Uplands Across Lakota Thamakhoche/Lakota Country, 1881-1940” PhD Dissertation, University of Alberta, 2022.
“Kinscapes, Counter Histories, and Nineteenth-Century Tintypes,” co-authored with Heather Caverhill, Victorian Review, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring 2022).
“Layers of a Letter: Lakota History, Language, and Voices in the Archive” Prairie History 3 (Fall 2020) no. 3 (Fall 2020): 82-85.
“Lakota Place Names in Southwestern Saskatchewan,” Folklore, Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society magazine and blog, Vol. 41, No. 3, Summer 2020. Available at: https://www.skhistory.ca/blog/lakota-place-names-in-southwestern-saskatchewan
“Holding Our Lands and Places: The Everday Politics of Indigenous Land and Identity,” Active History 12 January 2016. Available at: https://activehistory.ca/2016/01/holding-our-lands-and-places-the-everyday-politics-of-indigenous-land-and-identity/