Tanya Talaga is an award-winning Anishnaabe journalist and author. Through her bestselling books, acclaimed documentaries and podcasts, regular columns with the Globe and Mail, and powerful keynotes, Talaga aims to amplify Indigenous voices and stories across Canada and the world. She imparts audiences with in-depth knowledge on Indigenous culture and history, humanizing the legacy of residential schools and colonization while sharing her hope for a more inclusive and equitable future.
Talaga is of Indigenous and Polish descent. She is a member of Fort William First Nation and her mother was raised on the traditional territory of Robinson Superior Treaty area and in Treaty 9.
For more than 20 years, Talaga was a journalist at the Toronto Star. She is now a regular columnist at the Globe and Mail. In 2021, Talaga was part of the Globe team that won the Michener Award in public service journalism for reporting on the Catholic Church’s efforts to avoid responsibility regarding Indian Residential Schools, and the pursuit of an apology from Pope Francis. She has been part of teams that won two National Newspaper Awards for Project of the Year while at The Star.
Talaga is the author of two national bestsellers. Her first book, Seven Fallen Feathers, won the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and the First Nation Communities Read Award: Young Adult/Adult. Her second book, All Our Relations, was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize and for the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. Talaga will release her third book, The Knowing: The Enduring Legacy of Indian Residential Schools, in early 2024.
In 2018, Talaga founded the production company, Makwa Creative Inc. She directed and executive produced Makwa’s first film, Mashkawi-Manidoo Bimaadiziwin Spirit to Soar. It received the “Audience Award” for best mid-length documentary at the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival. Talaga is also the executive producer of the podcast, Auntie Up!, made for Indigenous women by Indigenous women.
Talaga holds four honorary doctorates. She was the 2017/2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy and, in 2018, was the first Anishinaabe woman to be the CBC Massey Lecturer.
