INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE
Professor Carole Lévesque Receives Prestigious Weaver-Tremblay Award

During its annual conference, the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) will confer the prestigious Weaver-Tremblay Award to Carole Lévesque, professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), head of the Réseau DIALOG, and close collaborator with Indigenous communities and authorities in Quebec and Canada for over 50 years.

Named after anthropologists Sally Weaver and Marc-Adélard Tremblay, the annual award created in 1992 recognizes an anthropologist's extraordinary contribution to Canadian applied anthropology.

"This award is all the more special since I had the good fortune to work, travel, and publish with Professor Marc-Adélard Tremblay in the 1980s and 1990s. It is a great privilege to have been able to collaborate with this great researcher, this forefather of Quebec anthropology, and to now receive an award that bears not only his name, but that of Sally Weaver," explains Carole Lévesque, professor at INRS' Urbanisation Culture Société Research Centre.

Carole Lévesque, Professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique.

 

A prolific career focused on people and knowledge

Carole Lévesque has spent more than half her career with INRS, having joined the research institution in 1995. The anthropologist, who holds a doctorate in social and cultural anthropology from Sorbonne Université, has devoted her entire career to learning about the historical and contemporary trajectories of Indigenous peoples. Since 1972, she has worked closely with Indigenous communities, organizations, and institutions in Quebec and elsewhere on projects and issues that originate in the field itself.

Over the years, Lévesque has experimented with and developed numerous participatory and collaborative research formulas in which individuals and communities play an active role. She has visited 46 of the 56 First Nations and Inuit territorial communities, and carried out numerous field surveys.

"Professor Lévesque's versatile methods, which centre on community engagement, are among the best examples of efforts to decolonize anthropology and related disciplines in Quebec, Canada, and abroad," says Monica Heller, President-Elect of CASCA.

Her many works, spread over more than a hundred studies, relate to material culture, education, modern families, oral history, community integration, urban Indigeneity, salaried work, the status of women, social policies, cultural security, and political autonomy. She has also directed or co-directed the work of around a hundred students over the years, and welcomed nearly 200 interns from a wide variety of backgrounds to the Réseau DIALOG.

INRS Interim Scientific Director Isabelle Delisle applauds the recognition. "After more than three decades at INRS, Professor Lévesque has become a pillar of our institution for exemplary research in collaboration with Indigenous Peoples. She has developed new approaches based on co-construction with the community, which are now used as benchmarks in research. On behalf of the INRS community, congratulations on this well-deserved award!"

Lévesque's other awards include the 2011 Prix Marcel-Vincent from ACFAS for her contribution to the development of the field of Indigenous studies in Quebec. The Quebec government also awarded her the Prix Marie-Andrée-Bertrand in 2016, recognizing her major role in reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

Today, CASCA is celebrating the multidisciplinary approach the professor brings to her research, which focuses on the human aspect and the recognition of indigenous knowledge systems. "My entire career has been coloured by a transversal understanding of anthropology. This is even more important since there are fewer and fewer anthropologists interested in Indigenous Peoples today than there were three or four decades ago."

Visionary researcher: the creation of the Réseau DIALOG

In 2001, Carole Lévesque founded the Réseau de recherche et de connaissances relatives aux peuples autochtones (DIALOG), which she still directs today. She also launched the Unité de recherches avec les Peuples autochtones at INRS in 1996. DIALOG brings together over 120 people from the academic and Indigenous spheres working in Quebec, Canada, the Americas, Oceania, Europe, and Asia.

DIALOG is truly interdisciplinary, like INRS, which has been the network's host university from the outset. The network brings together guardians of Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous intellectuals and leaders from 25 First Nations and urban Indigenous communities, as well as researchers representing some 20 academic disciplines from 27 universities around the world. A few dozen students, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, also regularly take part in DIALOG's activities.

In 2021, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada recognized the collaborative nature of the Réseau DIALOG and its understanding of the realities of the field by awarding it the Impact Connection Award, which highlights the mediation role played by DIALOG.

The CASCA Weaver-Tremblay Award bears further testament to the importance and scope of Professor Lévesque's work as a committed researcher. Jury members noted the visionary and lasting impact of the Réseau DIALOG, as well as Carole Lévesque's tireless involvement and quality work over the past half-century.

The award will be officially presented to her in May 2024; she will give a keynote speech to mark the occasion. She will explain the importance of her early training in anthropology, which has shaped her relationship with the world, her approaches, and her perspectives throughout her rich career.