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

Throughout Seven Fallen Feathers, Tanya Talaga describes how racism is embedded within the Canadian education system. This harm stems back centuries, beginning with the Indian Residential Schools System, and continues today. The dark purpose of residential schools was to shatter Indigenous children’s ties to their cultures and languages and assimilate them into white Canadian society. Federal government officials and the police achieved this by ripping children away from their families and sending them to schools hundreds of miles away. While at these schools, children couldn’t speak their native languages or practice their cultural traditions. Failure to follow these rules resulted in brutal abuse. Residential schools were thus “an act of cultural genocide” (61). Through these schools, the Canadian federal government intentionally tried to destroy the practices and structures that allow Indigenous groups to maintain their identities.

In addition, the federal government didn’t always send Indigenous children to schools with other children from their tribe. Maryanne Panacheese’s experience with the residential school system is one example. Maryanne was from an Anishinaabe background, yet she was sent to residential school with children who were primarily Akwesasne, which is a different cultural group.