PRINCE ALBERT — Carlton Comprehensive High School alumni Katie Tolley was one of two students to receive the 2026-27 Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor Indigenous Scholarship.
The Scholarship, which was announced in May, provides $20,000 to support graduate and post graduate students in Saskatchewan who are advancing research excellence and leadership within their disciplines.
This year, for the first time, two additional $20,000 scholarships have been awarded, totalling $80,000 in student support.
Tolley said that the scholarship will provide a big boost to her research.
“I think it just reaffirms what you're doing and that you're on the right path with what you're doing,” Tolley said.
“I think it's more important for the Metis community and specifically research community as a whole. There's really a lack of Metis specific health research in Canada and in the province, so it's really important when Metis and distinction based research and programs are highlighted.”
Tolley is pursuing a PhD in Public Health at the University of Saskatchewan, examining how Métis youth sexual health and wellness education is represented through policy and classroom practice.
“(It gives) a spotlight to say that it's really important that Metis people have their own programs, own research, and since we're our own distinct people,” she said.
Tolley’s research is part of a larger Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) funded research project.
“It's called ATOHTITAM. It’s a Cree word and it means becoming of age. For the larger project, it's basically focused on creating health and wellness resources and specifically sexual health education resources with a pan-indigenous approach, so Cree, (and) Metis mostly,” Tolley explained.
As part of the research, Tolley and others interview students and teachers. That became difficult when the Parents Bill of Rights in Saskatchewan came into effect. That made it difficult for researchers to interview youth in high school, forcing them to rely on interviews with young adults who had just graduated.
The larger project interviews teachers, students, and teachers in both SUNTEP and ITEP.
“Right now they're at the stage where they've created these resource bundles for teachers to use. They're just piloting them, making adjustments, making sure they're ready to go,” Tolley explained.
Tolley said the final project will be something that teachers can use in the classroom when they are planning, prep work and activities.
Her own project began when she was working on a Master’s of Public Health before she transferred to the PhD program.
"I've been working on this project for a while when I started as a master's student. I was helping with the interviews and collecting the data that they used to make these bundles,” she explained.
Once those bundles are ready the PhD part of her work will be adding on to the research she began during her Master’s.
“I'm going to be taking these bundles and piloting them with Metis teachers in Saskatchewan, and we're going to be doing digital storytelling,” Tolley explained.
Each teacher will be making a short video talking about using a culturally-centres resource in the classroom and their experience teaching in Saskatchewan. The goal is to spotlight Metis teachers and what it is like for them in the classroom.
She also plans to do a policy analysis of the Parents Bill of Rights, since that has an effect on how educators teach sexual health education in the classroom. She will also focus on what the experience is like for students too.
Tolley said that she thinks that the research will fill gaps both on the Metis side of the research and the Parents Bill of Rights side of the research.
“The first most important kind of gap was that sexual health education and that there's a lack of culturally specific resources for students,” Tolley said.
The Parents Bill of Rights came into effect while she had already started her research, and that convinced her to expand her area of study.
Tolley said doing a PhD in Public Health can also touch on other fields.
“When we think about health research, we might have kind of a narrow field in mind, but it encompasses so many different areas,” she explained. “People have expertise in so many different places and this kind of, I guess, just fit perfectly for me.”
Tolley also has a lot of educators in her family, including a lot of teachers in Prince Albert.
"It kind of was the perfect intersection of what I'm interested in, and then just my life experience as well,” she said
Tolley said that in the next year she will be looking for teachers to take part in the project.
"I will be looking for teachers in the next year, if anyone wants to share their story with me,” she said. “I'm just excited to get the award and excited for what it means for me to research and excited to get going on my research.”
Christopher Hansen was the other student who received the 2026-27 Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor Indigenous Scholarship. Hansen is pursuing a Master of Applied Science in Energy Systems Engineering at the University of Regina.
"Congratulations to this year's remarkable recipients on earning their scholarships through original thinking and groundbreaking research," Lieutenant Governor Bernadette McIntyre said in a press release. "I am delighted that funds have increased to provide more support for some of Saskatchewan's most brilliant graduate and post graduate students."
