For the last two years, Tanya Talaga has barely had a moment to catch her breath. Since the publication of her 2017 book, Seven Fallen Feathers, the Toronto Star reporter has been on a professional tear, winning numerous writing prizes, completing a public policy fellowship with the Atkinson Foundation, and making history as the first Indigenous woman to give the prestigious CBC Massey Lectures. Talaga’s lecture series, All Our Relations, examines the legacy of cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples and has already been heard by sold-out crowds everywhere from Vancouver to Halifax. Starting Monday, it will be heard by the rest of the country, too, with the broadcast of her Massey lectures on the CBC radio show, Ideas. Ahead of the first broadcast on Nov. 12, the Star spoke with Talaga about her Indigenous identity, her evolution as a journalist, and why she insisted on holding the first Massey lecture in the northern Ontario city that started it all: Thunder Bay.I’d like to start by talking about your personal history and identity. You’re Polish on your dad’s side and Anishinaabe on your mom’s side. What kind of relationship did you have with the Indigenous side of your identity as a young girl?I grew up in Toronto and I would spend some summers in northern Ontario with my mother in Raith (an hour northwest of Thunder Bay). She would pack us up in the car and we would head out for the two-days drive north, and in Raith, we would stay with her grandparents, who were residential school survivors that raised her. That, to me, was very much my link with my family, with my Anishinaabe side, because we were in the bush.Growing up in Toronto — it’s weird, especially in the time I grew up. I would tell people, “My dad’s Polish, but my mom’s mom is Ojibwe,” and they would look at me like I had six heads. Nobody really got that and from my appearance, everyone always thinks I’m Italian or Greek. ...
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