Seven Fallen Feathers Quotes

“It is vital that people understand how the utter failure and betrayal of the treaties — nation-to-nation agreements First Nations signed with the British Crown — worked in conjunction with a paternalistic piece of legislation called the Indian Act to isolate Indigenous people on remote reservations and to keep them subservient to Ottawa for more than one hundred years.”
― Tanya Talaga, Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City

“Rebuilding an inequitable and harmful relationship is not easy. But for the good of all our children – Indigenous and not – the hard work must begin.”
― Tanya Talaga, Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City

“to understand the stories of the seven lost students who are the subjects of this book, the seven "fallen feathers," you must understand thunder bay's past, how the seeds of division, of acrimony and distaste, of a lack of cultural awareness and understanding, were planted in those early days, and how they were watered and nourished with misunderstanding and ambivalence. and you must understand how the government of canada has historically underfunded education and health services for indigenous children, providing consistently lower levels of support than for non-indigenous kids, and how it continues to do so to this day.”
― Tanya Talaga, Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City

“We need to be certain that evil doesn't exist and one way to deny it didn't happen is to declare them accidents.”
― Tanya Talaga, Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City