My Research Journey

Finding Myself in Stories

I was born and raised on Lax Kxeen Island (Prince Rupert) on my ancestral Ts’msyen land in northern British Columbia. Storytelling was my world long before I ever thought about academic pathways or research questions. School was hard for me, but writing stories felt easy. When I was a kid, I would honestly go all out, filling notebooks with characters, settings, dialogue, random ideas, sometimes full plots, sometimes just cool lines I didn’t want to forget. I’d hand those notebooks or folded pages to anyone around me who would read them. Friends, cousins, teachers, my mom, anyone... I didn’t care if a story was finished or spelled right. Writing just felt like the one place I could be myself without worrying if I was doing it correctly. My favourite book back then was Green Eggs and Ham, because Sam was throughout the whole story, and in my little-kid brain, that felt like representation. Like the story was written for me personally.
I still have a book my Grade 1 teacher gave me for Christmas, and it’s still in almost perfect condition. No ripped pages, no bent corners, nothing like that. For years, I thought that detail was random or maybe a little weird, until I got older and realized, no, it actually made sense. Picture books were pricey, and in my elementary years, we didn’t have many at home. Books were something you borrowed, traded, or were lucky enough to be gifted. My mom was an older post-secondary student who earned her Bachelor of Social Work while raising us, balancing bills, school, kids, and life, all at once. One semester, she had to read a heavy story related to teenagers. I knew I wasn’t supposed to read it, but curiosity hit early for me, and I read it anyway as a pre-teen. That story took place in Victoria, which was the first time I ever heard of the city in detail, instead of just seeing it on a map. Googling photos of the island came right after that. I didn’t say it out loud then, but that was the moment I held onto the idea of moving here someday after high school. Looking back, that book is honestly the reason Victoria stuck in my mind so early. It planted the idea that eventually led to me moving here and starting my life on the island, still writing, still learning, and still trying to balance the kinds of stories we put in front of kids today.
I’m in my first year of my PhD in Indigenous Education at UVic right now, and honestly, I’m still figuring out how it all fits together. The big questions about stories in classrooms, what we choose, what we skip, what kids carry with them, it takes time to untangle that stuff. Grad school has given me a lot of imposter syndrome moments, too. The kind where you sit there wondering if your thoughts even make sense or if everyone else secretly feels the same and just doesn't say it. The good news is, it's finally starting to feel a little more natural. My research question is becoming clearer, slowly turning into something I recognize when I read it back. Writing stories is still the center of what I do, just like when I was younger, but now I spend more time thinking about balance. Not just trauma-heavy stories, not just history stories, but the whole mix. The funny ones, the everyday ones, the family moments, the language pieces, the land-based ones, all of it. Indigenous kids deserve to see themselves in more than one type of story. They deserve the full range, the full picture, the honest mix. And maybe that’s been the goal the whole time; I just didn’t know how to say it then.

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The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf

This TEDx talk was done by Grace Lin, author and illustrator. She talked about how what kids read helps shape their self-worth and how they see others, but also how the books that aren't on the shelf matter just as much. That clicked for me, because it ties right into my PhD question, what stories are kids actually getting, and which ones are missing? It made me think harder about finding balance in children’s books, mixing the deeper stories, the funny ones, the everyday family moments, the land, the languages, all of it. That balance? That’s the part that drives my work now, making sure Indigenous kids get more than one kind of mirror in the stories they grow up with.

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Photos

The book my Grade 1 teacher gave me for Christmas. Green Eggs and Ham, where I first saw the name Sam on the page and thought it was the coolest thing ever. Some of my stories from when I was really little. I’d also write little book reviews sometimes and draw the cover myself, no plan, just fun. And a letter from Robert Munsch when I started taking writing a bit more seriously.