Tanya Talaga is an award-winning author and journalist and a powerful voice for Indigenous rights and education in Canada.

She’s also a constituent, which is how we happened to connect again recently when she was hosted by the House Speaker together with other finalists for the Shaugnessy Cohen Prize in political writing.

Talaga joined me a number of years ago at the Fox Theatre to talk about her 2017 award-winning book Seven Fallen Feathers.

This conversation focuses on her recent book, The Knowing. It is a deeply personal story in which she traces her own family’s history, and it is a story of Indigenous people in Canada, injustice, reclamation, and outlasting.

With her own background one of both Anishinaabe and Polish descent, Talaga writes: “From the legacies of these dual branches of genocide, one on Turtle Island and one far off in eastern Europe - comes my knowing.”

I recommend reading the book and you can also watch her docuseries at CBC Gem.

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