Seven Fallen Feathers

Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City

Tanya Talaga

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781487002275
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

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NOTES FROM A BLIND MAN

Arthur Street runs east to west in a long, straight ribbon through the downtown area of the Fort William region of Thunder Bay. Arthur Street is devoid of charm — it’s a stretch of drive-thru restaurants, gas bars, and grocery stores, and cars in a hurry to get anywhere but here.

Turn off Arthur, north onto to Syndicate, and you’ll find the Victoriaville Centre, a poorly planned shopping mall with a 1970s vibe. The mall is riddled with empty stores and stragglers having a cup of coffee before heading over to the courthouse across the street. Parts of the mall have been taken over by mental health clinics, an art gallery, and an Indigenous health centre. Upstairs is the main administration office of Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN), a political organization representing forty-nine First Nations communities encompassing two-thirds of the province of Ontario, spanning 543,897.5 square kilometres.1

There is one elevator and it behaves like an old man. It grumbles as the door shuts, and it shakes and heaves its way slowly upstairs. A sign posted near the buttons says, “When the elevator breaks down, call this number . . .” “When,” not if.

This was where I found myself one grey day in April 2011. I was there to see Stan Beardy, NAN’s grand chief.

The 2011 federal election was in full swing. The incumbent Conservative candidate, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was largely loathed by the Indigenous community. During his five years as prime minister, he had stripped away environmental protections, built pipelines, and continually underfunded the 634 First Nations across Canada.2 Harper was duking it out with Jack Layton, a former Toronto city councillor and leader of the left-­leaning New Democratic Party. Layton was a guitar-playing socialist whose mandate was to tear down highways and build bike lanes and parks.

The receptionist ushered me into a large common meeting room to wait for Stan. Everything in the room was grey — the walls, the tubular plastic tables, the carpets. The only splash of colour was a white flag with a red oval in the middle. Inside the oval — a traditional symbol of life for Indigenous people — is the Great White Bear. The red background is symbolic of the Red Man. The bear is stretched out, arms and legs open wide. His feet are planted firmly on a line, which represents the Earth, while his head touches another line, which is symbolic of his relationship to the Great Spirit in the sky. The circles forming the bear’s rib cage are the communities, and the lines of the rib cage are Indigenous songs and legends, cultures and traditions that bind all the clans together.

Stan walked in and greeted me warmly. His brown eyes twinkled as he took a seat.

Stan is a quiet, pensive man. He said nothing as he wearily leaned back in his chair and waited for me to explain why exactly I had flown 920 kilometres north from Toronto to talk about the federal election.

I launched into an explanation of what I was writing about, trying not to sound like an interloper into his world, someone who kind of belongs here and kind of doesn’t. This is the curse of my mixed blood: I’m the daughter of an Eastern European and Ojibwe mother who was raised in the bush about one hour’s drive west of Thunder Bay, and a Polish father from Winnipeg.

I rattled off abysmal voting-pattern statistics among First Nations across Canada, while pointing out that in many ridings Indigenous people could act as a swing vote, hence influencing the trajectory of the election.

Stan stared at me impassively.

I started firing off some questions, but every time I tried to engage him, he talked about the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old Indigenous boy named Jordan Wabasse.

It was a frustrating exchange. We were speaking two different languages.

“Indigenous voters could influence fifty seats across the country if they got out and voted, but they don’t,” I said. “Why?”

“Why aren’t you writing a story on Jordan Wabasse?” Stan replied.

“Stephen Harper has been no friend to Indigenous people, and if everyone voted they could swing the course of this election,” I countered.

“Jordan has been gone for seventy-one days now,” he said.

I tried to ask about Layton. Surely the policies of the left-leaning New Democratic Party would be more focused on Indigenous issues, I pressed.

But to this, Stan said, “They found a shoe down by the water. Police think it might have been Jordan’s.”

This standoff went on for a good fifteen minutes before I gave up and we sat in silence. I was annoyed. I knew a missing grade nine Indigenous student in Thunder Bay would not make news in urban Toronto.

Then I remembered my manners and where I was. I was sitting with the elected grand chief of 45,000 people, and he was clearly trying to tell me something.

“Jordan is the seventh student to go missing or die while at school,” Stan said. Since 2000, Jethro Anderson, Curran Strang, Paul Panacheese, Robyn Harper, Reggie Bushie, and Kyle Morrisseau had died. Now Jordan Wabasse was missing.

Stan’s message finally sank in. Seven students. Seven is a highly symbolic number in Indigenous culture. Every Anishinaabe person knows the prophecy of the seven fires. Each prophecy was referred to as a fire. Each fire represents a key time in the history of the people on Turtle Island, the continent of North America. The first three fires outline the story of what life was like before first contact with Europeans in 1492, of the peaceful existence along the Atlantic coast and the migration west to find food and water.

The fourth fire predicts the coming of the light-skinned race and what happens once they arrive. This prophecy warned that the Anishinaabe would be able to tell the future by reading the faces of the light-skinned race.3 There were two predictions based on this reading. In this first, if the face was one of happiness and brotherhood, a time of change would come for everyone on Turtle Island. Two nations would join as one, resulting in the growth of a mighty nation full of knowledge and understanding. This would be a time of harmony and peace.

But the second prediction said that if the light-skinned race wore a face of darkness, the Anisihinaabe must be very careful. This face would bring extreme suffering and death. This face might be hard to see in the beginning. It might resemble the first face, but in fact behind the second face the hearts of the light-skinned race are dark and want nothing more than to take for themselves what the land has to offer. This face would bring forth destruction, filling the rivers and waters with poisons and causing the animals to begin to die.

By the fifth fire, war and suffering would grip the people. There would be promises of salvation by one who would assure them that there would be joy if the Indigenous people accepted his teachings. But if the people listened to this prophet, they would be lost for generations. They would forget the ways of the past and have no direction for the future.

By the sixth fire, the light-skinned face would wear the mask of death. The people would have been deceived. Sickness of the spirit and body would overwhelm the people and the children would be taken away. The teachings of the Elders and the past would be forgotten, and families would be torn apart and stripped bare. The people would be gutted, their purpose in life forgotten — and the “cup of life will almost become the cup of grief.” 4

By the time of the seventh fire, young people would rise up and begin to follow the trails of the past, seeking help from the Elders, but many of the Elders would have fallen asleep or be otherwise unable to help. The young would have to find their own way, and if they were successful there would be a rebirth of the Anishinaabe nation. But if they were to fail, all would fail.

Stan told me the seven students were from communities and families hundreds of kilometres away in the remote regions of Northern Ontario, where there are very few high schools. All of them were forced to leave their reserves to pursue their education.

More than seventy-five northern First Nations from NAN territory and from Grand Council Treaty #3 near the Manitoba border are isolated reservations spread across a vast area of forests full of birch trees, sweet-smelling cedars, and the rock of the Canadian Shield. Indigenous people move to Thunder Bay out of necessity to complete their high school education, to find a job, to access health care, and to escape the poverty of the rez.

About 108,000 people live in the city, and according to Statistics Canada more than 10,000 are Indigenous.5 But that number is only going up. Near 2030, 15 percent of the City of Thunder Bay’s estimated population is expected to be Indigenous.6

The city couldn’t be any more different from the communities they have left. Back home, there are no traffic lights or crosswalks. No McDonald’s or Loblaws. Most communities have only one shop — the Northern Store, a catch-all selling everything from high-priced groceries to batteries and rubber boots. These goods are all flown in via charter airplane, making the prices prohibitive — often three or four times the price of food in southern cities.

Food insecurity in the north isn’t just about prices. Vegetables, fruit, and fresh meat are often so expensive that people rely on cheaper food items such as bread, pop, and processed meat to fuel their diet. Poverty forces these choices and a host of food-related problems plague Indigenous people as a result. Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and den...