Photo: Jad Limcaco | Unsplash
Life for Jesse Thistle took a wrong turn when he was separated from his mother at a very young age. By the time he was 19, Jesse was alone, often living on the streets. It would be 10 hard years of drugs, jail and rehab before Jesse would begin to turn his life around. The turning point came in prison, when he went through a horrific drug withdrawal with no medical support. The experience was reportedly the jolt Jesse needed. To stave off cravings from crack, he started re-teaching himself how to read and write. After prison, he went back to rehab to deal with his addictions. He continued his education during his stay there. "I'd stay up late every night looking over encyclopedias, and my grades started topping the charts...." Today, at age 37, Jesse is an assistant professor at Toronto's York University and is close to completing his PhD. Now reunited with his mother, Jesse often employs her as his research assistant, which gives him access to her indigenous community, something he would not likely have without her. "It's great, because we can work through our broken relationship as son and mother.... I say that our research methodology is based on love."
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