Seven Fallen Feathers author kicks off CBC Massey Lectures Tour

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY—Seven Fallen Feathers author Tanya Talaga kicked off her 2018 CBC Massey Lectures Tour with a lecture on What Are the Keys to Healing a Community on Oct. 16 in Thunder Bay.

“When the CBC asked me to give a Massey Lecture, I agreed but I said I had one condition and that is we start these lectures in Thunder Bay,” says Talaga. “This place, for me, under the shadow of Anemki Wajiw, is where it all begins. I needed to be giving these lectures from here, from where my mother, from where my grandmother, and from all the grandmothers before her have walked for thousands of years.”

Talaga says her mother’s family lived on the land about an hour northwest of Thunder Bay at the height of land where the water flows either south to the Great Lakes or north to the Arctic.

“So it is only fitting we begin right here in a place that really represents in so many ways a microcosm of this country we call Canada, a place where the First Peoples of this land met the colonizers, a place where our conflicts, our love and our struggles are laid bare for all to see,” Talaga says. “It is a city that was home to one of 17 Indian residential schools in the province of Ontario, St. Joseph’s, and a place where Indigenous children have come from the north in pursuit of high school educations because they have no access to high schools in their remote First Nation communities.”

Talaga adds that Thunder Bay is the “city of Seven Fallen Feathers,” where seven First Nations high school students from across Nishnawbe Aski Nation territory died while pursuing high school studies.

“We have all come here tonight to show Canada through these lectures that this is how we do it, this is how the Anishinabe do it,” Talaga says. “This is how we come together to lift our voices up so loudly to show our children, all of our children, our Indigenous and non-Indigenous kids that this is how we raise our voices together to demand that all children in this country we call Canada be treated fairly, be treated equally, and that every child in this country be given the same basic human rights that will allow them to have a good start in life.”

Talaga delivered her presentation to a standing-room-only crowd at the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium, which seats 1,500.

“The presentation is a good way to once again get these stories into the living rooms and kitchens of average Canadian people who often times don’t have any true understanding of the history that has happened here in what we call Canada,” says Fort William Councillor Michele Solomon. “The key points that I walk away with are that through reclamation of our identity as a people, we will get better and also that colonization doesn’t have to hold us back.”

Fort William citizen Celina Reitberger says Talaga’s presentation was “exceptional.”

“I was very moved — I had tears in my eyes for a lot of the presentation,” Reitberger says. “I think she is a genius. I can’t wait to read her [latest] book, and I think as one man said in his comments, that she has opened a lot of eyes tonight. She has given a lot of truths to people who I hope will hear them and act accordingly.”

Talaga’s 2018 CBC Massey Lectures Tour also includes stops in Halifax on Oct. 18, Vancouver on Oct. 23 and 24, Saskatoon on Oct. 26 and Toronto on Oct. 30.