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4.5 

Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City

By Tanya Talaga
Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City by Tanya Talaga digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

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.

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777 Reviews

4.5
““Elder Shannon Thunderbird says the Indian Act created an oppressive regime within a democracy: ‘It’s actually hypocrisy for Canada to stand forward as a kind of bulwark of protest against atrocities going on in other countries while at the same time we turn a blind eye to our own people.’” This quote is the reason this book is so important. I believe that it has become part of school reading in some of Canada but it should be mandatory for all. Every government in Canada has abandoned our First Nations, even after campaigning and winning based on empty promises to address the inequities, indifference, racism, violence, underfunding, and inhumane living conditions experienced by our Indigenous peoples. This book highlights the horrific legacy of residential schools and the ways they continue today under a different name. Indigenous youth are denied equal opportunities to education within their own communities and put their lives at risk seeking it outside of them. The legal system disregards and ignores Indigenous victims and treats them as disposable while over criminalizing them and not providing supports for the generational trauma the government of Canada sanctioned. The fact that clean drinking water is not accessible on many reservations is abhorrent. It astounds me that Canadians have such pride in being “nice” while abusing our most vulnerable population. There are seven young fallen feathers in this book. They cannot tell their stories. Talaga is being their voice. We need to listen and demand that we do better as a country. To paraphrase Jesse Wente, the first step is Truth. Telling the truth, acknowledging the truth, understanding the truth. Only then can there be any sort of steps toward reconciliation.”
“I read this for my English class, and it did not leave the impact I thought it would. At first, I was interested to understand the struggles of Indigenous Peoples, but near the end, it was so repetitive and it lacked inspiration. Every chapter was about the same, except two that stood out to me. I recommend that Tayla Talaga includes multiple different cities and age groups to add more depth to the story.”

About Tanya Talaga

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