In May, Julie Giabiconi, PhD in Development Studies candidate, was awarded a grant by the Phillips Fund for Native American Research of the American Philosophical Society for her research project entitled “Buffalo River Dene Nation and Treaty No. 10: Ethnohistory of a Neglected Treaty”.

The project is part of her thesis on the same subject and its implications for development strategies. It combines archival research and the recording of oral history on the treaty and thanks to the Philips grant, this month Ms Giabiconi is in Canada carrying out research for the project in the Saskatchewan Archives Board in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She is also conducting ethnographic fieldwork on the Buffalo Dene Nation reserve in Northern Saskatchewan.

The originality of the project lies in this combination of archival and ethnographic research, according to Ms Giabiconi. “It will add to the very few scholarly works on Treaty No. 10, and the growing corpus of materials emphasising indigenous interpretations of indigenous treaties. Furthermore, it will form a contribution to the greater project of an ‘anthropology of indigenous treaties’ as framed by Professor Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff”, she said.

Ms Giabiconi said her project aims to present a comprehensive account of the signing of Treaty No. 10 in 1906, in Northern Saskatchewan, Canada, and to explore its implications on the past, present and future relationships of the Buffalo River Dene Nation and Canada.

Julie Giabiconi is a French citizen with a Master in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Strasbourg in France. In addition to the Phillips Fund for Native American Research, for this project, she received a doctoral student research award from the International Council for Canadian Studies, a mobility scholarship from the University of Geneva, and two full scholarships from the Graduate Institute.

In the 2011-2012 academic year Ms Giabiconi will be a teaching assistant in the new Anthropology and Sociology of Development academic department offering a Master and a PhD in Anthropology and Sociology of Development.