Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City

An acclaimed Anishinaabe Canadian author and journalist, Tanya Talaga has both Polish and Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) ancestry. Her father was Polish Canadian, and her mother’s family is from Fort William First Nation. Her great-grandmother, Liz Gauthier, was a residential school survivor, and her great-grandfather, Russell Bowen, was an Ojibwe trapper. His family hid him in the Canadian wilderness, which is why he didn’t end up at a residential school. Her maternal grandmother is a member of the Fort William First Nation. Talaga’s mother grew up in Raith, Ontario, a small community about an hour northwest of Thunder Bay. While Talaga was raised in Ontario, she spent summers with her mother’s family in Raith. At age 20, she discovered that she had a sister who was raised by an adoptive family and that several of her mother’s siblings grew up in foster care. All these experiences deeply shaped her writings on the impact of residential schools, structural racism, mistreatment of the Indigenous peoples in Canada, and intergenerational trauma.

Talaga worked as a journalist at the Toronto Star for more than 20 years. She was nominated for Canada’s premier public service journalism award, the Michener Award, five times.