The Knowing - by Tanya Talaga

Book Synopsis

From Tanya Talaga, the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Seven Fallen Feathers, comes a riveting exploration of her family's story and a retelling of the history of the country we now call Canada

For generations, Indigenous People have known that their family members disappeared, many of them after being sent to residential schools, "Indian hospitals" and asylums through a coordinated system designed to destroy who the First Nations, Métis and Inuit people are. This is one of Canada's greatest open secrets, an unhealed wound that until recently lay hidden by shame and abandonment.

The Knowing is the unfolding of Canadian history unlike anything we have ever read before. Award-winning and bestselling Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga retells the history of this country as only she can--through an Indigenous lens, beginning with the life of her great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter and her family as they experienced decades of government- and Church-sanctioned enfranchisement and genocide.

Deeply personal and meticulously researched, The Knowing is a seminal unravelling of the centuries-long oppression of Indigenous People that continues to reverberate in these communities today.

Review Quotes

"The story of one woman gone missing becomes the story of all the children who never came home. Tanya Talaga fearlessly takes on Canadian History and presents it through the lens of indigenous experience - an absolute prerequisite to understanding how we got here from there and how we must move forward....The Knowing, written in beautiful, often heartbreaking prose, is a handbook for reaching beneath the myths of Canadian history and finding the truth of a Canadian genocide as horrific as any other." -- Michelle Good, bestselling author of Five Little Indians

"The Knowing is a masterwork by one of our most essential storytellers. Tanya Talaga once again bears witness to the truth and shares it with searing clarity and a deep compassion. She exposes history denied and compels a new understanding of the Canadian story. The Knowing is deeply researched and urgent storytelling at its finest. At a time when journalism is in crisis, Tanya Talaga shows us the power of rigorous and thorough reportage and in doing so honors the survivors and their descendants with the gift of truth. This may be my favorite book ever." -- Jesse Wente, author of Unreconciled

"Any attempts to eliminate or literally bury any evidence of the Indigenous concentration camps' malicious architecture are no match for the mighty Tanya Talaga. In The Knowing, we witness one of the most significant Truth Sayers of our time embark on an epic, generations-long quest to find the unmarked grave of her ancestor. Talaga employs both her keen investigative eye and her tender author's heart to transform the political into the personal; cryptic paperwork into the details of precious lives lost; this country's shame into a call to action." -- Catherine Hernandez, author and screenwriter of Scarborough the book and film

"The Knowing is a deeply personal account of Talaga's search for her missing and disappeared family members. By sharing her family's story, she is helping to address what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission identified as an urgent need - to create historically literate citizens. We find and feel Annie's spirit with every turn of the page, despite the government's efforts to disappear her. This book teaches us all that knowing our ancestors, is knowing ourselves." -- Kimberly R. Murray, Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves

"As Tanya Talaga investigates the story of her great-great grandmother's fate, she lays bare the dark history of a nation. This is about a Canada that you do not know, but one we all must confront. The Knowing is harrowing, illuminating and necessary reading." -- Carol Off, author of At a Loss for Words

"The Knowing is everything we've come to expect from a Tanya Talaga book - meticulous research, impassioned advocacy, searing prose. But this is her most personal story yet, an epic re-telling of one family's story that illuminates both the repugnant history of Indian residential schools in Canada and the inspiring reclamation of Indigenous identities." -- Duncan McCue, author of Decolonizing Journalism: A Guide to Reporting in Indigenous Communities

"Through the lens of our nation's most prescient truthteller, an unspeakable hurt is painstakingly excavated. This is the story of Tanya Talaga's lineage, an eighty-year search to unravel the mysteries that shroud her great-great-grandmother's fate. This is, also, the story of how Canada came to be. These pages give voice to generations of abducted and discarded souls, a land stolen, a way of life eradicated. Tanya's profound empathy and unwavering determination to discover their truth honours their resilience and spirit. This book is a path forward." -- Mark Sakamoto, author of Forgiveness

"Tanya Talaga is one of the greatest storytellers out there, and has done incredible work sharing Indigenous and Canadian history in accessible and impactful ways." -- She Does the City