Tanya Talaga


Tanya Talaga is an Anishinaabe Canadian journalist and author. An investigative reporter for the Toronto Star, she is most noted for her 2017 book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City, which won the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize for non-fiction and the 2017 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

Life

Talaga is of mixed Indigenous and Polish heritage. Her maternal grandmother is a member of Fort William First Nation and her great-grandmother, Liz Gauthier was a residential school survivor.

Career

Talaga's journalism work with the Toronto Star has focused on Indigenous people and issues in Canada.
Her first book, Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City was released in 2017 to critical acclaim and shortlisted for numerous awards in both 2017 and 2018. The book examines the deaths of seven First Nations youths in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and began when Talaga was assigned to write a story about why more First Nations people weren't voting in the 2011 federal election, only to find that many people were reluctant to cooperate with her story because the deaths weren't its focus.
Talaga delivered the 2018 Massey Lectures, entitled All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward. Based on her 2018 Massey Lectures Talaga released her second book, All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward, which shares the name with the lecture series.

Awards