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

“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.”

Talaga’s interaction with Stan Beardy, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s grand chief, marks a pivotal point in the story of the “seven fallen feathers.” Before this discussion, most of the non-Indigenous members of Canada hadn’t heard about the deaths of seven Indigenous children in Thunder Bay. Once Talaga realized the significance of these deaths, she began her investigation. In doing so, and in writing this book, she helped raise awareness in the broader Canadian society about the legacy of intergenerational trauma, the structural racism and biases still inherent in justice and education systems, and the continued mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. This book acts as a call to action for Canada to improve its treatment of Indigenous peoples and correct the inequities and injustices rampant in all aspects of Canadian society.

“Jordan didn’t know anyone at Fort William. Not only that, once he got to the bridge he would have to have walked on massive concrete blocks and industrial garbage discarded by construction crews, down the steep embankment and snow, and fallen into the water.”

Here, Talaga outlines why the police’s conclusion that Jordan’s death was accidental doesn’t make sense. They haven’t been able to satisfactorily explain how Jordan ended up in Fort William, which was relatively far from his home, and ended up in the frozen river. As Talaga documents, the Thunder Bay police haphazardly investigated all seven children’s deaths, pointing to biases toward Indigenous communities within the police department itself.

“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.’”

Shannon Thunderbird is a singer-songwriter, speaker, author, educator, advocate, and Elder of the Giluts’aaw tribe in Canada. She works to shed light on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. In this passage, she emphasizes how Canada has failed Indigenous peoples. While Canada, like the US, claims to be a bastion of freedom and human rights, the country’s treatment of Indigenous peoples suggests otherwise. The education, justice, and federal government system for decades all acted together to suppress Indigenous culture and tradition. These systems now either try to hide the evidence or are slow to acknowledge and remedy the deep injustices that Indigenous peoples have experienced.

“In 1942, one government visitor to the United Church’s Mount Elgin School in Muncey, Ontario remarked: The building is of brick construction and from the outside presents a somewhat imposing appearance, but inside it’s one of the most dilapidated structures that I have ever inspected. At the time of my visit the plumbing in the boys’ wash-room was in a faulty state of repair, with the result that the wash bowls were full of filthy water and the floor of the wash-room in a filthy condition. The odours in the wash-room and indeed throughout the building were so offensive that I could scarcely endure them. Certain parts of this building are literally alive with cockroaches.”

The Indian Residential School System systemically disrupted the lives of Indigenous peoples for generations because it severed children from their families and culture. These schools were truly horrific places for children, as this passage shows. Not only were the living conditions deplorable, but children also faced sexual and physical abuse at the hands of principals, teachers, and other students. One of the worst aspects of the story of residential schools is that although the Canadian federal government knew for several decades that these schools were terrible places for children, it took decades for all the residential schools to close. The Canadian federal government could have shut down these schools much sooner yet chose to keep them open, furthering intergenerational trauma.

“Again, the numbers of kids who were sexually and physically abused will never be truly known. Only now are survivors coming forward. As of the end of January 2015, the Independent Assessment Process, created under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, received 37,951 abuse complaints. By the end of 2014, 30,939 cases had been settled and $2.69 billion paid out in compensation.”

While sexual abuse was one of the most terrible aspects of the Indian Residential Schools System in Canada, it took decades for this abuse to be publicly revealed. As these figures show, a large number of Indigenous children were subjected to sexual abuse at residential schools. While these survivors finally receive compensation, many of their abusers have yet to be jailed. A private investigation contracted by the federal government in 2016 estimated that over 5,000 people committed sexual abuse at residential schools. However, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that fewer than 50 have been convicted of a sex crime. Many turned to alcohol and drug use to forget their horrific abuse. Sexual abuse at the residential schools destroyed Indigenous families, and the impacts of this abuse are still felt within Canada’s Indigenous communities today.

“As the department started to choke off funding to the church-run residential schools, a great gulf emerged in the northwest. Suddenly, if families wanted to send their children to school, they had to go to provincially run schools in the urban areas.”

Throughout the book, Talaga underscores how structural racism is rampant in Canada’s education system. Supporting this notion is that the government failed to invest in schools and universities close to rural Indigenous communities when they closed residential schools, despite promising to do so. Tribal councils and members attempted to fill this gap, but they lacked the resources to ensure that public schools were well-funded and taught a similar, high-quality curriculum across schools in Indigenous communities. The government’s failure to address this gap in schools has resulted in a massive education achievement gap between Indigenous students and their white counterparts.

“The one problem the educators couldn’t foresee was that every single one of those children [at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School] brought the ghosts of the past with them.”

This passage describes intergenerational trauma. Even when children didn’t attend residential schools themselves, they came from homes with residential school survivors. Many of these survivors battled alcohol and drug use and in some cases were themselves physically and sexually abusive. The trauma from residential schools not only broke many survivors but also negatively impacted their children and their children’s children. These children indirectly experienced their trauma because of the residential schools. Intergenerational poverty exacerbated the impact of the residential school trauma. Children didn’t have extra cash to fly home to visit families or even purchase basic necessities for themselves. As a result, many kids banded together, but some still experienced difficulty adjusting to their new environments far from their homes. Thus, trauma weighed down the children just as it had many of their parents.

“He [Jerry Paquette] wanted boarding homes categorized into a three-level graduated system. Level one homes would be hands-on, stricter with set rules and aimed at younger students who needed more support. Level two homes would be a bridge between level one and the more relaxed level three category that would be ideal for more independent older students who could handle more freedom.”

Talaga reflects the difficulty of how to handle the issue of boarding parents. In some parts of the book, she emphasizes how the boarding parent system exacerbated the challenges that Indigenous children faced because many boarding parents were neglectful. In other areas, she notes how boarding parents acted as pseudo-parents. Her waffling demonstrates the issue’s complexity. Not all boarding parents were bad, but the system clearly wasn’t working as a whole. Several reports commissioned by the NNEC, including the one by Jerry Paquette, raised alarms about the boarding parent system and made recommendations for how to repair the system. Implementation of these changes never occurred. Had the NNEC taken the time to repair the boarding parent system, perhaps fewer Indigenous children would have been harmed over the last few decades.

“The people of Pikangikum had something in common with those in Sri Lanka. Both did not have access to clean drinking water. But Sri Lanka was getting relief from the Government of Canada. Pik was not.”

This passage underscores how the Canadian federal government routinely ignored its Indigenous communities. Pik, a remote town in northern Ontario, lacked access to basic necessities well into the early 2000s. The government never once tried to help the community. As a result, the community faced high levels of despair caused by poverty and intergenerational trauma, which resulted in one of the world’s highest rates of death by suicide. Nevertheless, when a tsunami hit Sri Lanka, the Canadian federal government immediately sent aid to the country. Canadian aid workers helped Sri Lankans get access to clean drinking water, yet they didn’t do this for their own citizens. Once again, the federal government treated Indigenous peoples as secondary citizens.

“‘We would get egged by white kids,’ James says. ‘People would yell out of passing cars, ‘Go back home! Go back to your land!’ he recalls. ‘Meanwhile, this is our land.’”

In addition to fighting against intergenerational trauma and homesickness, Indigenous children living in Thunder Bay faced extremely high rates of racism. The city has one of the highest hate crime rates in Canada. Indigenous people living in the community tried to report these hate crimes, such as egging and the use of racial slurs, to the police, but the police never did anything. The Thunder Bay police repeatedly showed that they didn’t care about Indigenous people and were unwilling to protect them.

“Water is everywhere in Mish and it is nowhere.”

Talaga reiterates numerous times throughout the book that many Indigenous communities, despite living next to water, lack access to clean water and sewage systems. The Ojibwe in Mishkeegogamang First Nation are just one example. In Mish, the water is poisonous. The residents have allergic reactions to the water, and it smells. Moreover, many houses don’t have pipes because they freeze in the winter and burst. Thus, while water literally surrounds Mish, it’s also nowhere on the reservation. This reality highlights how centuries of racism and apathy from white Canadians have denied Indigenous communities access to basic necessities, including water.

“The families left behind feel helpless and voiceless, just like Maryanne. Most feel as if the investigations into the disappearances and deaths have been put on a shelf by investigators with no explanation whatsoever as to what has happened to their loved ones.”

Indigenous communities’ relationships with the police are shrouded in suspicion and mistrust. The police often fail to take reports of missing Indigenous people seriously, a point that Talaga repeatedly highlights. One of the most egregious examples of this are the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Over a period of 30 years, at least 1,181 Indigenous women and girls have been murdered, although the number is likely higher. Very few of these cases have been solved because of the apathy, racism, and colonialist attitude of the justice system as a whole.

“The dead tell their own story. Coroners know this. So do pathologists. The motto of the Office of Chief Coroner is: ‘We speak for the dead to protect the living.’”

Coroners follow strict guidelines when investigating an urgent case. Robyn’s counted as an urgent case since she was a teenager who died under mysterious circumstances. However, in Robyn’s case, the coroner didn’t follow proper procedure. It took hours for him to arrive at the scene, and he never notified Robyn’s mother of the results of his investigation. In addition, his report contained inaccuracies. After Robyn’s death, the chief coroner of Ontario implemented a formal audit process to review how departments followed the guidelines. Two months later, the chief coroner’s office released new guidelines, which were more relaxed than the original ones. Robyn’s case further illustrates how the justice system fails Indigenous youth.

“While blame is not supposed to be assigned in an inquest, Rudin stated categorically: ‘We hold NNEC responsible for what happened to Robyn. There is no question the NNEC is trying its best, and there’s not a lot of money, but they did have services they held out to capable and competent and they were neither.’”

Although all the deaths this book describes are heartbreaking, Robyn’s is perhaps the most tragic since hers could have been avoided. David Fox and Cheyenne Linklater should have taken Robyn to the hospital given the state of her intoxication. However, they didn’t. David claims that he didn’t realize alcohol poisoning could lead to death. While this may be true, the NNEC clearly didn’t have the resources to help and protect the Indigenous children under its care; a point that Jonathan Rudin, the lawyer for six of the seven families at the inquest, made. He called Robyn’s death a homicide and blamed the NNEC.

“‘There is no way my brother fell into the water and drowned,’ said Ricki. ‘He was too good a swimmer.’”

The Thunder Bay Police ruled all the cases in which Indigenous children were pulled from the river accidental drownings. The police force refused to thoroughly investigate the cases, arguing that because all the children were intoxicated the night they disappeared, they must have drowned. While this might be true, many of them disappeared under mysterious circumstances, including Ricki’s brother, Reggie. As Ricki notes here, Reggie was a strong swimmer, and children in his age bracket are less likely to drown than those in other age groups. Nevertheless, the police dismissed foul play in Reggie’s disappearance. Reggie’s mom, Rhoda, fought hard for an inquest into the disappearances and deaths of Thunder Bay’s Indigenous children. If the justice system were truly fair and equitable, Rhoda wouldn’t have had to do so, and her son and the other fallen feathers would have received the justice they deserved. Given the injustices rampant in the justice system, Indigenous people still don’t trust it today.

“On the National Day of Action Shannen and her class met with the Conservative government’s Indian Affairs minister, Chuck Strahl. Shannen, along with classmates Solomon Raw and Chris Kataquapit, would please their case. Mushkegowuk Grand Chief Stan Louttit would also be in attendance. The kids were led to a plush Parliament Hill office with cornice mouldings. To break the ice, Strahl asked the kids what they thought of his office. Shannen responded, ‘I wish I had a classroom that is as nice as your office.’ Strahl immediately told the kids that building a school in Attawapiskat wasn’t on the Conservative’s list of priorities. The meeting was over. Some of the Elders began to cry.”

While Talaga details the racism and apathy faced by many Indigenous communities in Canada, she also shows the resiliency of Indigenous peoples. One particularly poignant example is Shannen Koostachin of the Attawapiskat First Nation. Before her tragic death in a car accident, Shannen led a campaign to have a new school built in her Indigenous community, Attawapiskat. This campaign grew to be the largest youth-led rights movement. Shannen pushed the Canadian federal government to increase funding for Indigenous children’s education, as this passage describes. Her legacy lives on in “Shannen’s Dream,” a campaign that children from her community launched to improve Indigenous education across Canada.

“Within the span of two years, the tiny north-western Ontario community of Keewaywin First Nation lost two teenagers at DFC: Robyn Harper in 2007 and Kyle Morrisseau in 2009. The deaths of two kids in a community of 350 people is the equivalent of losing seven hundred teenagers in Thunder Bay.”

The statistics in this passage underscore how the loss of Indigenous children shatters their communities. Rural Indigenous communities don’t often have a high population. Thus, when just one child dies, it’s extremely significant and has ramifications throughout the community. Two children dying is even worse. Robyn and Kyle weren’t the first of the seven fallen feathers. The inability of the Canadian federal government, the NNEC, and the police to protect Thunder Bay’s Indigenous children resulted in deaths that should never have occurred.

“He [Christian] slept all day and dreamed about his son. Kyle was dressed in all red and he was bopping around, twirling fast like the Tasmanian Devil from the Looney Tunes cartoons. He said ‘Dad, I’m hurting too.’”

Throughout the book, Talaga describes Indigenous spirituality and cultural traditions, like the dream that this passage describes. In doing so, she helps educate non-Indigenous readers about how important culture, language, and tradition are to Indigenous communities. While non-Indigenous people can never completely understand what it’s like to have their culture torn from them, Talaga’s descriptions of Indigenous cultural traditions at least convey some sense of what a loss it must have been and show that building trust between Indigenous and Western cultures has a long way to go. Talaga describes again and again how the Thunder Bay’s police and government officials don’t seriously consider the importance of visions, feelings, and dreams to Indigenous peoples. In their ignorance, they force their cultural perspective onto Indigenous communities.

“In 2013 Statistics Canada crowned Thunder Bay the hate crime capital of Canada. At 20.9 hate crimes per 100,000 of the population, Thunder Bay had more reported hate crimes than any other city in the country.”

Many of the Indigenous students with whom Talaga speaks describe hate crimes committed against them for being Indigenous. When they tried to raise these issues with the police, the police didn’t take them seriously. Nevertheless, the statistics in this passage show that hate crime is a serious issue in Thunder Bay and is potentially tied to the deaths of some of the fallen feathers. When the Thunder Bay police chief was confronted with these statistics, he tried to explain them away by saying that they’re the result of more people coming forward and more police officers recognizing hate crimes because of training. His attitude embodies why Indigenous communities mistrust the police.

“In his closing submissions on May 26, 2016, Falconer pointed out to the jury that verdicts of ‘accident’ are really all about exercises in damage control. ‘This concept of ‘no foul play’ is deeply linked to the ‘accident’ verdicts because it reassures the police that the worst did not happen,’ he said. ‘And because investigations were bungled, we don’t know if the worst happened,’ Falconer told the jury.”

Falconer was brutally honest with the jury throughout the inquest. He repeatedly said that racism and apathy prevented the police officers from caring about the plight of Indigenous students. Perhaps for this reason, it was especially disappointing to hear that the jury’s recommendations to remedy the justice system were no different than earlier recommendations put forward by various consultants and government authorities. Once again, the judicial system failed Indigenous communities by not attempting to figure out how to make more actionable and meaningful recommendations.

“‘Indian Affairs is not designed for anything other than colonialism,’ she [Cindy Blackstock] said.”

Talaga routinely describes investigations into the treatment of Indigenous communities by the federal government. Most of these investigations have similar recommendations. Nevertheless, nothing changes for Indigenous communities. As Blackstock notes, the reason for this is that the country’s institutions are at their core colonialist in nature. It will likely take more than recommendations to address the systemic issues caused by centuries of colonialism and structural racism.

“The painting shows each of the seven students in profile as they wait to pass on to the next world. On the far right is Kyle. He is the tallest of the brown figures. Their faces are all turned toward the bright yellow drum, a sun, in the middle of the painting. The painting captures the moment when their hearts and spirits are passing on to their loved ones, who wait for them on the other side.”

In the penultimate chapter, Talaga explains the origin of “seven fallen feathers.” Christian, Kyle’s father, coined this phrase. He hated that people referred to the lost Indigenous children as the seven dead children. For him, this took away their spirit and all that they were in life. He painted the seven fallen feathers to memorialize them and show that they’re more than just death. A copy of the painting appears on the top half of the book’s cover.

“On Friday, May 12, Thunder Bay Police put out a press release regarding the investigation into Tammy’s death. After an extension search by the Criminal Investigations branch, the police concluded, ‘There is no evidence to indicate criminality in this tragic death.’ Police further stated the results of the post-mortem indicated Tammy’s death was ‘consistent with drowning.’”

The deaths of Tammy and Joshua in Thunder Bay in 2017 underscore how little progress has been made toward eliminating the racist and apathetic viewpoints of the broader Canadian society against Indigenous peoples. After years of court fights in which evidence routinely showed that the police of Thunder Bay were too quick to dismiss cases, they did it again. None of the recommendations are implemented quick enough to save Indigenous children.