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First Nation Communities Read 2018-2019

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Seven Fallen Feathers
Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City
By (author): Tanya Talaga
Tanya Talaga

Imprint:

House of Anansi Press - Toronto

ISBN:

9781487002268

Product Form:

Paperback

Form detail:

Trade
Paperback , Trade
English

Audience:

General Trade
Sep 30, 2017
$22.99 CAD
Active

Dimensions:

8.5in x 5.5 x 1 in | 1.01 lb

Page Count:

384 pages
House of Anansi Press Inc
House of Anansi Press
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Indigenous
 
Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing 2017, Winner Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction 2017, Short-listed RBC Taylor Prize 2017, Winner First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult 2017, Winner Speaker's Book Award 2017, Short-listed B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-fiction 2018, Short-listed J. W. Dafoe Book Prize 2017, Short-listed CBC Canada Reads 2017, Long-listed Blue Metropolis First Peoples Prize, for the whole of her work 2024, Winner National Bestseller 2017, Commended Indigo Best Book of the Decade 2017, Commended Walrus Book of the Decade 2017, Commended Globe and Mail Top 100 Book 2017, Commended National Post 99 Best Book of the Year 2017, Commended Chatelaine 20 Best Books of 2017 2017, Commended CBC’s Nonfiction Book of the Year 2017, Commended
  • Short Description
The shocking true story of seven young Indigenous students who were found dead in a northern Ontario city over the span of seven years.

Winner, 2017 Shaughnessy Cohen Writers' Trust Prize for Political Writing
Winner, 2017 RBC Taylor Prize
Winner, 2017 First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult
Winner, 2024 Blue Metropolis First Peoples Prize, for the whole of her work
Finalist, 2017 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction

The groundbreaking and multiple award-winning national bestseller work about systemic racism, education, the failure of the policing and justice systems, and Indigenous rights by Tanya Talaga.

Over the span of eleven years, seven Indigenous high school students died in Thunder Bay, Ontario. They were hundreds of kilometres away from their families, forced to leave home because there was no adequate high school on their reserves. Five were found dead in the rivers surrounding Lake Superior, below a sacred Indigenous site. Using a sweeping narrative focusing on the lives of the students, award-winning author Tanya Talaga delves into the history of this northern city that has come to manifest Canada’s long struggle with human rights violations against Indigenous communities.

TANYA TALAGA is of Anishinaabe and Polish descent and was born and raised in Toronto. Her mother was raised on the traditional territory of Fort William First Nation and Treaty 9. Her father is Polish Canadian. Tanya is a proud member of Fort William First Nation.

 She is the acclaimed author of the national bestseller Seven Fallen Feathers, which won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult Award; was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the BC National Award for Non-Fiction; and was CBC’s Nonfiction Book of the Year and a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. 

Talaga was the 2017–2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy, the 2018 CBC Massey Lecturer and is the author of the national bestseller All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward. For more than twenty years she was a journalist at the Toronto Star and is now a regular columnist at the Globe and Mail

Talaga's third book, The Knowing, based on her family's experience in residential schools, will be published in late summer, 2024.

Tanya Talaga is the founder of Makwa Creative, a production company formed to elevate Indigenous voices and stories through documentary films and podcasts. In 2021, she founded the charity, the Spirit to Soar Fund, which is aimed at improving the lives of First Nations youth living in northern Ontario. Talaga has five honorary doctorates.

This story is hard and harrowing, but Talaga tells it with the care of a storyteller and the factual attention of a journalist. She makes the difficult connections between this national tragedy and the greater colonial systems that have endangered our most vulnerable for over a century, and she does it all with a keen, compassionate eye for all involved, especially the families who are too often overlooked. These stories need to be heard. These young people deserve nothing less than to be honoured everywhere. - Katherena Vermette

Seven Fallen Feathers may prove to be the most important book published in Canada in 2017. Tanya Talaga offers well-researched, difficult truths that expose the systemic racism, poverty, and powerlessness that contribute to the ongoing issues facing Indigenous youth, their families, and their communities. It is a call to action that deeply honours the lives of the seven young people; our entire nation should feel their loss profoundly. - Patti LaBoucane-Benson

You simply must read this book. Tanya Talaga has done the hard work for us. She sat with the families, heard their stories. Now, with the keen eye and meticulous research of an uncompromising journalist, she is sharing their truths. We have to start listening. Parents are sending their children to school in Thunder Bay to watch them die. Racism, police indifference, bureaucratic ineptitude, lateral violence — it doesn’t have to be this way. Let this book enrage you — and then demand that Canada act now. - Duncan McCue

[A]n urgent and unshakable portrait of the horrors faced by Indigenous teens going to school in Thunder Bay, Ontario, far from their homes and families. . . . Talaga’s incisive research and breathtaking storytelling could bring this community one step closer to the healing it deserves. - Booklist

Talaga’s research is meticulous and her journalistic style is crisp and uncompromising. . . . The book is heartbreaking and infuriating, both an important testament to the need for change and a call to action. - Publisher's Weekly

What is happening in Thunder Bay is particularly destructive, but Talaga makes clear how Thunder Bay is symptomatic, not the problem itself. Recently shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, Talaga’s is a book to be justly infuriated by. - Globe and Mail

Tanya Talaga investigates the deaths of seven Indigenous teens in Thunder Bay — Jethro Anderson, Curran Strang, Robyn Harper, Paul Panacheese, Reggie Bushie, Kyle Morrisseau, and Jordan Wabasse — searching for answers and offering a deserved censure to the authorities who haven’t investigated, or considered the contributing factors, nearly enough. - National Post

[W]here Seven Fallen Feathers truly shines is in Talaga’s intimate retellings of what families experience when a loved one goes missing, from filing a missing-persons report with police, to the long and brutal investigation process, to the final visit in the coroner’s office. It’s a heartbreaking portrait of an indifferent and often callous system . . . Seven Fallen Feathers is a must-read for all Canadians. It shows us where we came from, where we’re at, and what we need to do to make the country a better place for us all. - The Walrus

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