Tanya Talaga Has Long Told Indigenous Stories. Now, She’s Telling Her Own
Tanya Talaga walks through the doors of Charlie’s Pizza, a small restaurant within Bannon’s Gas Bar in Fort William First Nation, wearing a huge smile. The mood is light, and when we meet, she greets me with a warm hug. That’s because today is a homecoming of sorts for the journalist, author and documentarian: She’s back in her home nation, where I live, for the community premiere of her docuseries The Knowing.
This initial screening—ahead of its major showing at the Toronto International Film Festival some weeks later—is symbolic. Talaga’s roots in this area span decades: Her mom was born in Thunder Bay, Ont., and raised in Graham, Ont., in the traditional territory of Treaty Nine.
While Talaga herself was born and raised in Toronto, she spent her childhood summers in Raith, Ont., near Thunder Bay, fishing, snaring rabbits, picking berries, foot-loose and fancy-free on her homelands. In many ways, The Knowing—both the documentary and Talaga’s acclaimed third book by the same name, which was released in August—blends her history on this First Nation and her future in Toronto. From her early days as a newspaper reporter and through the authoring of her first two books, Talaga has spent her career covering overlooked communities and holding people with power to account. Now, with The Knowing, Talaga turns her reportage inward, searching for the lost history of her great-great grandmother, Annie Carpenter. It takes the award-winning writer full circle, from her home reserve to her home in Toronto. This is Talaga at her best: telling First Nations stories the way they ought to be told.
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Toronto may be a melting pot of diversity, but growing up, Talaga—whose father was Polish-Canadian—still found herself feeling like an outcast. “I would say, oh, I’m Anishinaabe and Polish,” she recalls. “And people would look at me like I had six heads. ‘What is that? And who are you?’” She found solace in books, getting lost in others’ words as a child. Her mother, Sheila Bowen, first left her small community to pursue an education, but she was drawn to the big city. When her husband received a job offer in Toronto in the mid-1960s, they jumped at the opportunity. They made Scarborough their home and raised their family there; Talaga’s mother and brother still live there today.
Though Talaga majored in politics and history at the University of Toronto, she worked at the campus newspaper and gravitated toward storytelling. In 1995, she began her journalism career at the Toronto Star as an intern before becoming a city reporter, working the radio room and covering local news and crime. Back then, she recalls, there was little thought to how insensitive a headline might be, and the newsroom was very white and patriarchal. “They weren’t too receptive to First Nations stories at the time,” she says. “You would talk to editors about stories and they would say, ‘Well, why do you wanna do that story? What’s the point? Isn’t it always the same?’” Talaga instead covered the stories she was assigned, stories deemed more important by her editors.
But the trajectory of Talaga’s career changed in 2009, when she joined the Star’s political beat and found herself at Queen’s Park. In this new role, she could pitch the stories she wanted to tell. She covered environmental issues and stories of the land, including Grassy Narrows and the dumping of nearly nine tonnes of mercury into the English/ Wabigoon river system. She credits Robert Benzie, her bureau chief, for helping her develop her confidence. Talaga would find herself in the middle of media scrums asking premiers, ministers, even the prime minister questions; she did whatever it took to get answers, even if it meant yelling at politicians. “It was a good lesson and I was forced to do it,” she says. “It made me more confident.”
But Benzie says she was always capable—and never afraid to ask tough questions. “People talk to her because they feel like they’re being heard,” he says about TT, as he calls her.
In 2011, Talaga reported a career-defining story: how Ralph Rowe, a Boy Scout leader and Anglican priest who worked in churches on First Nations across northern Ontario, sexually abused dozens of Indigenous boys in the 1970s and ’80s. Men came forward to the Nishnawbe Aski Nation to share for the first time their experiences of abuse and brokenness.
Prior to the Rowe story, Talaga had also turned her attention to another issue that hadn’t received the attention and urgency it deserved: missing and murdered Indigenous women and children. “At that point, it was 600 women,” Talaga says. She wrote about Shannon Alexander and Maisy Odjick, two friends who went missing from their home community of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg Nation in Quebec. “That was the first story I covered,” she says. “And sadly, they’re still missing.”
Around the same time, Indigenous communities were experiencing a reckoning. From 2009 to 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada heard testimony from more than 6,000 witnesses, reviewed church records and documents and shared the legacy of Indian Residential Schools with the world. In total, the Commission made 94 Calls to Action for truth and reconciliation for First Nation, Métis and Inuit people in Canada.
This marked a turning point for Talaga, by then a columnist at the Star. It was clear what she needed to write about: She went to an editor at House of Anansi and pitched a book about the children coming to Thunder Bay from their home communities for an education, and dying in the rivers. Their stories, she told the editor, were intertwined with a long history of mistreatment in this country, tracing all the way back to the missing children from Indian Residential Schools.
One story that Talaga covered in 2011 stood out: 15-year-old Jordan Wabasse, a First Nations student attending Thunder Bay’s Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, had been found dead in the Kaministiquia River months after he went missing. His story was mirrored by six other young Indigenous people in Thunder Bay—youth who sought education in the city, and whose disappearances and deaths were largely overlooked. Investigations into the Thunder Bay Police Services and the Service’s board later found that law enforcement operated in ways that upheld systemic discrimination.
“I was losing my mind because I thought, ‘Why is no one caring?’” Talaga says. Her coverage of the lives and deaths of those seven youth would become her debut book, Seven Fallen Feathers, released in 2017. The title was coined by Christian Morrisseau, whose son Kyle is one of the seven First Nations students Talaga profiles in the book.
After an inquest into the deaths, Morrisseau was compelled to pay homage to the Seven Fallen Feathers with a painting because he was “tired of hearing them being called [the] ‘seven dead students’ as if they weren’t anything else in life.” The painting was also used on the cover of Talaga’s book.
When Seven Fallen Feathers hit shelves, I felt hope for the first time in a long time. Finally, our community’s alarming rates of death would reach a national audience. And yet, to date, all seven cases referenced in Talaga’s book remain unresolved.
In 2018, Talaga was selected for the Massey Lectures to explore Indigenous youth suicide and cultural genocide. She spoke of the need for self-determination in social, cultural and political arenas as key to healing. (This research would also inspire her 2018 book, All Our Relations.)
Talaga went on to start her own media company, Makwa Creative. Makwa means black bear in Anishinaabemowin; in our culture, the black bear represents courage and offers healing—something Talaga has been able to do through her work. Her goal with the company: rewrite Canada’s history, one story at a time, all while nurturing the next generation of Indigenous journalists. (I was fortunate to be with her at the beginning of it all as a producer.)
Tesa Fiddler, an Indigenous educator in Thunder Bay and wife of Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler, says Talaga is continually holding space for so many. More importantly, “she doesn’t extract stories. She has built and maintained relationships with those communities and gives back,” she says. “It’s a reciprocal relationship.”
Toronto-based Mi’kmaw lawyer, professor and activist Pam Palmater says Talaga has a unique gift when it comes to storytelling. She’s able to weave fact-based stories that don’t ostracize anyone; instead, people feel respected and heard after talking with her. Settlers are just as open to learning from her work as Indigenous people are. “She epitomizes trauma-informed, culturally safe, factual reporting,” says Palmater. “She’s quick to lift up the voices of others.”
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Three years ago, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation used ground-penetrating radar to survey the grounds of a former Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The findings were devastating: The remains of 215 students were found in the search. In response, Canada marked September 30 the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
For Talaga, it was personal. She and her family are living through the impacts of colonial genocide: Talaga’s mom grew up not knowing where her family was from because of Canada’s centuries-long efforts to assimilate Indigenous people into white society. Her great-grandmother, Liz, raised her mom Sheila but never shared any of her history. Maybe she was protecting her family, or maybe she just didn’t know—Talaga isn’t sure. “Liz didn’t like talking about who she was, where she was from, what she’d experienced.”
Talaga’s third book, The Knowing, digs into this history. It tells the story of her family’s search for her great-great grandmother, Annie Carpenter, and by extension, the roots of Liz and Sheila. It’s a common fear among Indigenous people that our family members can be taken away at any moment—through Indian Residential Schools, Indian hospitals, asylums or children’s aid services. So, with the help of archivists and First Nation genealogists, Talaga tracked Annie down to an unmarked grave at a former asylum in Toronto—not far from where she lives today.
In many ways, Talaga’s family history is also Canada’s history. It’s one of the reasons she is so respected in Indian Country: because we see ourselves in her stories.
With Makwa Creative and with the recent premiere of The Knowing at TIFF, Talaga is now reaching an international audience. Next up, she is exploring our shared history through the film Nadaamaadis. A co-creation with director Shane Belcourt, the film will tell the story of one of the first Land Back movements by Anishinaabe warriors in the Kenora, Ont., area.
Through Talaga’s work, I witnessed how important it is to include our narrative, our truth. No longer are Indigenous women shrinking themselves to make others comfortable. No longer are we healing alone. We are working together to remember who we are and where we come from—and Talaga has given us permission to tell our truth.
Talaga and I first met in November 2019 at a Journalists for Human Rights gala. Later, while out for coffee, she told me about her idea for Makwa Creative. I wanted to write about her then, but I couldn’t get my recorder to work. We’ve since come full circle, reconnecting on our home reserve. This time, the recorder worked.