Ideas - What a cultural genocide took from Indigenous people in Canada

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

2018 Massey Lecturer Tanya Talaga reflects on the legacy of cultural genocide, and on how the stories of Indigenous peoples offer lessons for Canada today. *This episode first aired on March 6, 2024, as part of a series of conversations with — and about — former Massey Lecturers to mark the 60th anniversary of Massey College, a partner in the CBC Massey Lectures. 

So you're saying this airline forces the cabin crew to work for free. Tell me you're at least paid for boarding and de-plaining. No. Safety checks. No. Not even medical emergencies. No, but we'll always show up. But they're charging flyers more than ever.

And we're putting in thousands of unpaid hours. Where is that money going? Canada's airline, hey? Unpaid work is a true crime. Visit Unfair Canada.com to hear the whole story. A message from the Air Canada component of Cupy. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed.

Boozoo, Thunder Bay. I am so very, very happy to see you all. In 2018, CBC Massey lecturer, Tanya Talaga, explored the legacy of the cultural genocide of indigenous peoples. Traditionally, all indigenous nations have a deep connection to the land. Humans are part of the greater life story. The forced separation from the land disrupted centuries of social and cultural cohesion. Every person belongs.

Every person has a purpose and a hope. She spoke about the present-day need for indigenous self-determination, and need that has only grown more acute over the years. In the summer of 2016, the Wapakika chief, Brennan Sainuwap, he sent a formal letter to the federal government. The feds are in charge of health care spending dollars for First Nations. And in the letter, he asked for immediate assistance because some of the community members had discovered

some of the girls were planning to die by suicide. but that request was denied. As part of a series marking the 60th anniversary of Massey College, one of our partners in the Massey Lectures, Tanya Talaga sat down with Ideas producer Nahid Mustafa to reflect on her lectures and on how the stories of indigenous peoples offer lessons for Canada today.

I'm delighted to be here today, the traditional territory of the Miss Sagas of the Credit. I just want to say thank you for having me and my family. Along with the interview, you'll hear excerpts from her 2018 Massey lectures entitled All Our Relations, Finding the Path Forward. Her first lecture was recorded in Thunder Bay and addressed the lineage from cultural genocide to the tragedy of youth suicide across indigenous communities. Among the Gujarni in Brazil, Native Americans,

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, Inuit, First Nations, Métis, they have the highest recorded youth suicide rates in the world. Yet, there are no global statistics. The United Nations describes the situation like this, and this truly is the most understated phrase I think I have ever heard. they say indigenous children are caught between history and quote-unquote present-day dynamics. I am now going to look at some of those present-day dynamics. I'm going to look at some of those dynamics right here now in northern Ontario.

I'm going to talk now about the communities that I know, and I'm going to tell you now, about how, from 1986 to 2017, there were 558 suicides in Nishnabi-Aski Nation, a territory where roughly 49,000 people call home in an area roughly the size of the country of France. I'm going to tell you the story of Wapakika First Nation and Poplar Hill First Nation, where, over the span of one year,

seven girls whose lives have intersected either back home in group homes or in care facilities far, far away from home, have died by suicide. Elena Moose. Kenina Sue Turtle. Jo Lynn Winter. Chantelle Fox.

Amy Owen. Janera Round Sky. Jeannie Grace Brown. Wapakika is a small community of about 400 people. If you want to access mental health care in these communities in Wapakika, for example, you have to leave. You have to get on a plane and you have to leave your family, everything you know, leave, take a plane, just to access a doctor or a mental health expert, a psychiatrist. I think a lot about that.

the Canadian health care system is failing our kids. But here's the thing. It did not have to be that way. It did not have to be this way in Wapakika. Because in the summer of 2016, the Wapakika chief, Brennan Sainuwap, he sent a formal letter to the federal government. And the federal government, the reason why he sent it there,

is because the federal government is still in control of health dollars, for First Nations communities. So if First Nations communities want a change, want some emergency help, or they need to fly some doctors in, what they have to do is they have to ask for assistance. The feds are in charge of health care spending

dollars for First Nations. So the chief, he wrote this letter. And in the letter, he asked for immediate assistance because some of the community members had discovered some of the girls were planned. to die by suicide. So they send this letter off to Health Canada, and the chief asked for $376,706 right away

so they could get four emergency mental health care workers. But that request was denied. And why was it denied? Because the bureaucrat at Health Canada that answered this letter said it was a quote-unquote awkward time in the budget cycle. An awkward time in the budget cycle. And here's the thing.

Wapakika had been dealing with suicides years earlier for quite a long time. Actually, between 1982 and 1999, there were 16 deaths by suicide in a community of 400 people. and so that request was denied and then what happened on january 8th 2017 jolyn winter she died by suicide and then two days later her best friend chantelle fox died by suicide nishnabi aski nation grand chief alvin fiddler he visited Wapakika after these things happened and after he went to the funeral he came home

he got on a plane to Ottawa as he'd had enough he was going to hold a press conference in the national press theater in Ottawa and I also want you to keep in mind too newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to quote unquote reset the relationship with indigenous people in this country

He was going to have a renewed, quote-unquote, nation-to-nation relationship that understood the constitutional rights of indigenous people. So, at the time of the January 2017 press conference, Alvin was up to here. He'd had enough. I should also tell you, too, that Alvin is the son of Moses Fiddler, who witnessed in 1929 the signing of adhesion of the Treaty of Number 9 that expanded Ontario's borders all the way to Manitoba. Without that treaty being signed, the province wouldn't have grown that way. So, before the press conference started, Alvin fired off a letter to the prime minister. And in this letter, he pointed out that the federal government, since Prime Minister Trudeau had been elected, he pointed out every single ignored inquest finding, every single enacted upon promise every single lost court order.

You see, children are not in control of the determinants of health. They are born into them. Dr. Helen Milroy is the very first female Aboriginal psychiatrist in Australia, and she points out that self-harm in indigenous communities was uncommon before the settlers came, but now it's the norm. Many children are exposed to suicide or suicidal behavior. They are part of the first generation of children.

They are exposed constantly to this threat, as she calls it, or act of self-annihilation. And she also says there is a narrative. There is a shared history of all colonized people of trauma, of exposure to suicidal tendencies when young, a history of discriminatory policies and laws, and as a result, there's a lack of cultural identity due to this force-severing of all of these things. Four indigenous people, Milroy says, the complex interplay of all these factors and so many more

all come together in a lived experience and underlying that life is a reality of genocide. This is what she says about that. We have come from a history of genocide, and genocide is about the deliberate annihilation of a race. It is about wanting to remove us from the earth permanently, which is very different as a concept from transgenerational trauma. It is trauma on a more massive scale,

psychologically, physically, spiritually, and culturally. It is another level of trauma. Keeping all of that in mind, mind, these Massey lectures are all about upholding and adhering the rights of indigenous children. These lectures are about restoring pride and where they come from and understanding that all kids, all indigenous kids, they have a place here in life. They are part of the grand continuum of life. they should be cherished and they should understand that they matter and you know traditionally all indigenous nations

have a deep connection to the land indigenous people feel whole when they're where they're from when they're around the trees and the earth and the rocks the places that they know the lakes the waters you feel a deep connection right here to place humans are part of the greater life story it's not an individual thing it's not just about me and about one person if you're an indigenous person you're part of the circle you're part of the grander continuum of life every person belongs every person has a purpose and a hope

I want to start with a broad question about the lectures that you had given back in 2018, the overarching theme of which was youth suicide. And I think in this broader sensibility, there's just thinking about this problem as a kind of steady state reality. Well, this is just how that is. How do you engage with that perception that this is just how it is? That's a big question for me because when I started off doing the research looking at youth suicide, why it is our children are taking their lives at their own hands, I started to veer into a different direction. And sometimes when you're a writer, you're a journalist, you start off with one thing and you end up going in a wildly different tangent. not really wildly different, all connected.

While I was intended to spend that time a whole year off with the Atkinson Fellowship as well to look at youth suicide, what I really quickly began to look at was genocide. What I quickly started to see was, because of course, how could I not see this, that this has been a pattern in First Nations communities for, so long. You know, I was a reporter at the Toronto Star for a couple decades. Started when I was 12. Thank you for laughing. That's this old joke, but I keep using it. I just get older. I would pitch those stories. I would see those stories come, you know, over the newswire. I knew about these stories, too. I knew that in Attawapasgad, for example, there was 12, 13, 14 kids that had tried to take their lives and then some succeeded. And that, you know, the editors would only take some stories if they were at the numbers were high. They kept looking at our children as numbers. They kept looking at our people as numbers. And they never really thought what's behind this, right? And I kept thinking there's so much more behind this.

This is not just, you know, our kids taking their lives for recent X, Y, and Z. You have to keep looking back to see why it is our children are born under this weight of history where we are born with the 60 scoop Indian residential schools. We are born with displacement. We are born with a violent separation from who we are as a people, from the land, from everything that we know and just taken away from that. These are the issues that, to me, fuel why it is our children are dying in such huge numbers. And the trauma that results from all of those things you carry with you for a long time.

you say that this challenge that this problem of young people taking their own lives is something that binds indigenous people globally that this is a problem regardless of where indigenous people are living this is something that afflicts them is there an intervention that you have seen that you think could also be some kind of global intervention that's a good question I did some traveling with the Massey lectures, which of course is a book as well. So you have to write a book before you could actually do the lectures. That's not that easy to, you know. Anyway, and I went to northern Norway. And in Laxel of Norway, I visited Sammy and saw what they do to treat addictions. And to me, there is something in wraparound treatment, wraparound intervention that doesn't just look at the child that is trying to die,

but looks at the family, looks at what's happening in the family, what are the dynamics within that family, and how that whole family needs to be treated, not just the child. As my friend, he said this, I think I quoted this in the book, Dr. Michael Curlew said, it's the donut approach. He's a man of words there. But it's true. It's circular, right?

It's wrapping around and making sure that the whole family is treated. Because you can't take, because this has been the approach for such a long period of time, is to take our children out of our communities. Because in the north, for example, in, Nishnabeaski Nations Territories. So that's treaty number nine. So that's all of basically northern Ontario when you look at a map above the Thunder Bay line, you know, all the way to Manitoba, essentially. And the Hudson Bay, James Bay, that whole area, there's about 49 communities there.

And you would, there are hardly any hospitals. I think there's, there's one in Moose Factory, right? We've got a hospital in Sioux Lookout. but there are no doctors, there are no specialists. There's no mental health treatment areas. So if the child is treated, the child is taken out of community by themselves, flown to a center like London, Ontario, or Toronto, or Timmons. I mean, how ridiculous is that? What are you doing?

You know, you're adding more stress onto that child or that young person. they're vulnerable and then when you're finished treatment or whatever that looks like you send them home right what is the answer there you know you have to treat the family you have to treat the community and what are the drivers behind why it is that child wants to die what is happening in the community what are they experiencing the family experiencing. It's all related. And then you have to look at treaties. You have to look at how this country was formed and the policies behind how this country was formed and how that all ties together into what you have now. I think it's one of those things where oftentimes

government and a system, a given system, will look for the immediate quick fix. And there's a real resistance to understanding how what you're seeing now is related to something that came before. It's so difficult trying to get people's attention, right? Trying to get people to care. That's always been an issue in our communities is how do you get the attention of Canada? How do you get the attention of media? You know, you've worked in media. I have for probably around the same amount of time.

And for a long time, no one wanted to hear our stories. No one wanted to hear First Nations stories. I remember pitching stories and just not being able to follow through on them at all. You know, things have changed, which is wonderful, but we still haven't addressed that. What drove the system to be created as it is now, right? It was not created for First Nations people. When Canada was created, an entire system, an otherness happened, and that is the Indian Act. And so we have generations of our families that are governed underneath a racist and

paternalistic act that is still on our books. You know, we are generations in my family under the Indian Act, in and out of the Indian Act, because there are changes that happen to the Indian Act. And that's a whole other lecture and a whole other story. And so to me, education reform has to be the way, you know, and telling true education of what happened in the this country starting from kindergarten and it cannot be something that is not that is a choice it can't not be mandatory i want to ask you about a connection that you make between the idea of genocide and this idea of self-annihilation that in some ways there are kind of mirroring of one another can you say more about that relationship um genocide teaches you not to love yourself right it teaches

not to belong. Like we have generations of our family members that don't know about belonging, that don't know about why it is that they're here. You know, why, like, who am I? Where do I belong? How did I get here? And what is my purpose in life?

Those questions are integral to any person, any child. but if you are an indigenous child, if you're a First Nations child, if you're a little niche kid growing up in the bush, how do you know the answers to any of those questions, right? Are you proud? How can you be taught anything when your parents have been ripped away other by the residential school system or the 60s scoop or economic means poverty?

All these social ills that destroys families. And so then you grow up, a child not knowing things, not knowing who you are and where you're from and how you can make a difference in life and how to be proud, right? That is self-annihilation. That's imposed. This quote from one of your lectures, they have always been where they are from. That's a quote from the story that you tell about riding the raft on the Albany River. Can you talk a little bit about that quote. What does that mean to you? And maybe if you want to tell that story about riding the raft down the river. Oh, my goodness. So it was funny. I was just actually on the

Kistoshan, Albany River, just three weeks ago, four weeks ago. I returned to the Albany River. Yeah, it was something, you know, and that quote in general, I'm thinking of, of the children, the youth that I met on that raft. So there's a man named Ed, Edmund, Metatwebun, who I adore and love. And Ed is from Fort Albany. He's a survivor of St. Anne's Indian Residential School, and he wrote Up Ghost River.

And I've known Ed for years, and it's Ed's raft. I kind of call it the River Cruise of the Crees. It's like this... It's this boat thing. He's got logs, and he put the logs together, these giant logs, and then he stuck a raft, like a little building on top, like a cabin. And when I went, he was out with youth from Fort Albany who had never been on the river. You know, you grow up your whole life in this community,

which is along the Albany River, which feeds into James Bay. and the youth had not been on the water, but yet they had always been from here, right? Our people have always been from that place, this place. And so to me, we have always been here because we have, like this, the air or the Aki, the Nibi, the water, it's in our blood, right? It's in our DNA as people.

and that you can't take away from you think you're going to take that raft cruise again well I don't know we're going to try and get that I hope you're going to try and get it organized again that would be good but it's getting hard you know the Albany River is drying up it was horrific to see the levels of the water going down so much due to climate change and in some spots you can't run a raft. This year for the moose hunt, the community had to hire a helicopter to take people up the river because there was no ability to be in the water

because of the change. Ideas is a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada on US Public Radio, across North America, on Sirius XM, In Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca.ca slash ideas. Find us on the CBC Listen app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayed. We are gathered here today to celebrate life's big milestones. Do you promise to stand together through home purchases, auto upgrades, and surprise dents and dings?

We do. To embrace life's big moments for any adorable co-drivers down the road. We do. Then with the caring support of Desjardin insurance, I pronounce you covered for home, auto, and flexible life insurance. For life's big milestones, get insurance that's really big on care at Dejardin.com slash care. On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz

comes an unprecedented exhibition about one of history's darkest moments. Auschwitz, not long ago, not far away, features more than 500 original objects first-hand accounts and survivor testimonies that tell the powerful story of the Auschwitz concentration cap, its history and legacy, and the underlying conditions that allowed the Holocaust to happen.

On now exclusively at ROM. Tickets at ROM.ca. I was corresponding with Senator Murray Sinclair the other night. I often turn to him sometimes when I'm just like, oh, what am I going to do? And luckily, he answers my emails. And he said to me,

he said that one of his dreams when he was involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was to empower a cadre of persons with the knowledge they had found while collecting the stories of 6,500 witnesses and survivors. those who were willing to continue the challenge of speaking to Canada about the need to change and how to do it. He said from the start that the purpose of the TRSC's report

was to, quote, arm the reasonable. Senator Sinclair would go on to tell Tanya Talaga that changes needed for reconciliation would not come merely from governments and churches stopping what they were doing, but change would come from indigenous people beginning to do what they had to do for themselves. He said,

we as indigenous peoples have been led to believe in our own inadequacies because we have so many that have arisen from our history of oppression and abuse. They virtually dominate our existence. When we are able to rise above them, we still are unable to see the solutions that work best for us are those that have sustained us for thousands of years. His message, look inward.

Tanya Talaga delivered the Massey Lectures in 2018, the same year she'd also been awarded an Atkinson Fellowship to pursue in-depth reporting on public policy. I started my Atkinson Fellowship research on youth suicide in indigenous communities by reading all the medical studies I could. speaking to well-meaning doctors and nurses, mental health workers, and health care providers. While there is some incredible work being done,

both here and in indigenous nations across the world, there is no quick fix to suicide. No, easy answer to why indigenous children are dying by their own hands in colonized nations. No, I had to look deeper. Children do not ask for the circumstances they are born in. When children are born into adversity,

into communities without clean water or proper plumbing, with unsafe housing, parents suffering with addictions and trauma, when they have to leave their communities to access health care and to access a high school education, basic rights easily obtained by other children in this country, when they do not have a parent to tuck them in to bed at night or tell them that they love them,

Children die. But the genocide against indigenous people that has taken place here in Canada and in the United States, in Australia, in Brazil, and the Arctic Circle did not actually work out. First peoples share a history of resilience and of civil rights activism.

This episode is part of a series marking the 60th anniversary of Massey College, one of our partners in the Massey Lectures. This episode features excerpts from Tanya Talaga's 2018 talks and from her conversation recorded at Massey College with Ideas producer Nahid Mustafa. There has been this conversation about how to move forward. And so much of that conversation is predicated on

indigenous people just got to move on. They just got to move forward. You know, the past is the past. The future is there for the taking. And it, again, puts the burden on the people that have been victimized by history and brutalized by the system to basically say, okay, well, you know, I'm going to forgive and forget and I'm going to move on to the next thing. How do you respond to this proposition that the challenge is in the forgiving and that that's all it's going to take? I hate it when people say that. You know, when they say that to me, I get that all the time.

I always think it's the most racist thing in the world. It's like, really? Really? And it just drives me bananas when I hear that. Okay, let's move on. You move on with me then. You abide by every single treaty this country has signed. You have not, right? How long has it taken us just to get the Robinson-Heron treaty decision?

It took, what, 15 years to get to that point, maybe longer? We're also the Robinson Superior. We're in court again. And if you don't know if you're unfamiliar with what those are, it's like there are challenges to the fact that our people signed treaties, our ancestors signed treaties, which allowed for $4 a year to be paid out for sharing of the land, sharing of their resources, the water,

the what's in the earth, the minerals taking, the trees taking, you know, the animals, everything. And that was supposed to change, supposed to elevate with time according to the treaties. And that never happened. Canada never did that. And so now we're in a position where we constantly have to take Canada to court in order to get those treaties recognized. And I'm happy to say that Robinson Huron, that treaty settlement, and these two treaties were signed within three days of each other, that settlement has happened. but our treaty, my family's treaty, is still in court right now to get to that point.

So when people say, why don't you move on, I'm like, okay, then let's get real then, then abide by your own laws. This is Canada's own laws. Like, we are not whistling Dixie. This is what is the law that made this country, all of these treaties. And we have to fight constantly to get any truth. in recognition to them. There's a real resistance to even engaging with the term genocide.

Is that a problem of the beginning or is that a problem of an end of the conversation? It's a problem of the beginning because you can't get people to say it and to admit it and to talk about the true history, as I've said of this country, then we're getting nowhere, right, when we get that resistance to what has happened, to how it can. continues to happen in this country, you know? When you look at the fact that there are more of our people in federal prisons and provincial jails than you have anyone else, when you look at the foster system is full of our children still, when you look at the murdered missing indigenous women and girls, and how it's still such a huge problem, when you look at the fact

that our children continue to die in the waters around Thunder Bay. When you look at Colton Bushy, we just had his birthday

a couple days ago. What is that I'll tell you? We are still living with genocide, the effects of genocide because we're still in systems

that have not caught up to reality. If we don't abide by the treaties and if we don't change things, so equity exists, we're not making anything better, right?

We're not saving that family from a life of poverty, of not feeling like they belong, of not feeling proud, of not saving that child. So genocide is important to talk about. And there are different forms of genocide. It doesn't have to look, you know, people will say, well, this doesn't look like Rwanda. This doesn't look like the Holocaust.

But when you see of an erasure of language, a violent separation of people off the land, the death of our children, you know, of being told you can't be that person, you can't be a First Nations person anymore, you must assimilate into the dominant culture. If you look at all of those drivers and even the separation of our people onto little reserves, right, all of these things, and being governed by a second set of rules called the Indian Act, Canada did all of those things. So what does that mean then, do you think, to be from a place that defines you and then you are of the place, but the place starts to deteriorate that way? at some point stops existing because of things like climate change and corporatization and mining and all of those things. Kind of says it all, doesn't it, in a way, right? The earth is sick, we're sick. Our communities in the north are the first ones to feel the effects of climate change, 100%.

The drying of the rivers and also the damning of the rivers too, right, that power corporations do in order to bring power down to the south. You think, oh, it's just up north. No one's going to notice up there or there aren't people up there. But when you do those things, you ruin the migratory pattern of woodland caribou, for instance, right? You're changing the water levels for the whales that come in to the Albany River and then go back out to James Bay. You scar the land, right? You harm where Fort Albany is, where the Albany River is. There's something called the Ring of Fire. right and this is territory where there is precious there is precious metals there are things that

are needed to drive your teslas to make your stainless steel appliances and it's deep in the peat it's deep in the earth right and this is an ecologically sensitive area of the planet second to the amazon rainforest and everyone is looking at bulldozing through there pete moso is taking the carbon that is heating the earth. And we ruin that. We continue to ruin ourselves as a planet and ourselves as people. It goes hand in hand. I mean, we do this work, not just for our communities. We're doing it for all of you, too. You're a writer, you're a storyteller. And you've talked about indigenous people being born under the weight of history. And that weight of history, and that weight of history imparts certain narratives.

And a lot of times those narratives will determine what you are, how you get talked about. But they don't necessarily help you understand who you are. How do you think about this way to transition between what you are to who you are about taking back the narrative? I think who you are comes from deep inside, right? And it gets back to that question of belonging and who am I and of what is my purpose in this life. That is, I hope, what drives. I hope that drives people to notice that that's who they are, not what they are. There's a, as humans, we're all like that.

You know, the Anishnavee need to, I talk about this in the lecture about Anishnaabe kids needing to know those four questions. of belonging. But every other person can ask themselves those questions, too. And how do they fit on the scale of humanity, right? Because everyone born has a purpose. Everyone born is part of a continuum is part of the circle, right? There are all spirits in these bodies that we are in now. So if you take one out, the circle is broken.

The continuum is broken. And this all gets back to belonging, right, of who you are. I think as a human race, we need to ask ourselves all those questions. The spirit created the universe, a circle from heart and from mind. That is who the Anishnaabe is. The circle is a fundamental concept in indigenous knowledge. We are all woven together in a continuum. We are together.

We are all connected in a circle. Now, this is totally different to the Western worldview that puts man at the top of the food chain. Kind of the same theory is only the fittest survive, and humans are the ultimate achievement of evolution. They're right up here at the top, and everything falls below man. This is linear thinking. It is not circular. There is a top, there's a bottom, there's a hierarchy, there's a chain of command. That's a triangle. Yet this was the dominant settler's way of life that indigenous people have been forced to see themselves through. It is completely against truly a definition of who they are. This tension. this difference between indigenous knowledge and the Western world.

It's not just something that's found here in Mancayana-Shanabe. It's also in Australia with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. There is a similar, similar thought of the beginnings. Aboriginal Australians believe about the spirit and about the interconnectedness and the creation, and this is called the dreaming. the dreaming is a period of time that has a beginning but it has no end it is a period where the world came into being and as such everything has a spirit man is regarded as part of nature

making man a part of the continuum of time this is why aboriginal people in australia say they have always been here. They have always been where they are from. And the Anishnaabe say that too. You know, keeping with that, Australia was not a vast wasteland when in 1788 British ships arrived on the shores to develop a penal colony.

In fact, this is actually, Australia is one of the oldest indigenous nations in the world. There was a recent analysis of a garbage pile that was found in Western Australia, and they dated it back to 80,000 years. That garbage was 80,000 years old. What's interesting about that is that is 10,000 years

before it's believed the first humans left the African continent. The Australians say, we have always been here, and they have. Back here on Turtle Island, we're in North America. There have been artifacts found around Lake Ontario that date back 5,000 years. Some scholars believe that there's evidence that there were almost 90 million indigenous souls living in North and South America. 90 million, far before contact in 1492. 90 million people living in longhouses, wigwams, teepees, living in villages,

each had their own complex cultures, customs, and laws. They had their own systems of government. They were complex places with chieftainships and moral codes and their own usages of the democratic system far before the concept was ever discussed in Europe. we talk about the Canadian project which is also a settler project it's also a colonial project

it's still ongoing it didn't end at some point and immigration is part of that project and we don't always like to talk about it that way but it is part of that settler project but this project is mapped onto this this map this thousands of years old map indigenous map of what Canada the place the place this land is

but also what that history is. And so how do you think about this relationship between the long history that indigenous people have and its relationship to this kind of modern Canadian project? What can that relationship look like if it's a meaningful relationship? I go back to education reform again. That's the only way forward for the project of Canada.

And I'm also thinking, too, of something that happened recently when we were in Fort Albany. So I was there with a film crew. And one of our members of the film crew, he is from Venezuela. And he was to become a Canadian citizen while we were in Fort Albany. And it was the wildest thing in the world because apparently you only get like basically two cracks at this. And it's done on Zoom, the Citizenship Cemetery. And the first time he couldn't do it, he was somewhere. Cemetery. Sorry.

Oh, my God. Yeah, sorry. That was a brain blip. So it's done on Zoom and you had one crack at it. He missed the first one. So he begged and pleaded. He said, can I do a second one? But my only problem is I'm going to be in Fort Albany.

And we were at Mike Metatwebans' house. Mike is a survivor of St. Anne's Indian residential school. and also Ed's brother. And so that's where we were staying. And the Zoom was on, and he was getting his oath of citizenship, but he'd forgot to pat a coat, like a jacket. And he was looking at the invitation to say formal attire. So he borrowed Ed's jacket, right?

He wore that. He sat there, and his audience was myself, our sound guy, Joe. who is First Nations, our production coordinator, who is First Nations, there's myself, his First Nations, and Courtney, our director. And how weird was that, that he was sitting there pledging allegiance to the Queen, or the King, I should say, and to Canada. And it was not lost on any of us. And then after when he was done, he made a repus for everybody.

That was wild. And that is Canada right there, right? And it sort of weaved everything into who we are now as a country. And I wish that ideal of that citizenship ceremony. Wow, what a slip that was. My book is all about residential schools and something else that I've been writing for a long time. and my brain goes there a lot. Anyway, I hope that ideal of Canada is the one we're aspiring to,

the one I just described. Do you think that can be an ideal for your kids? Eventually. Eventually, I hope so. You know, it takes generations. We always think in generations, right? Like, it's going to be seven generations. It's true.

There's so much change that needs to be done. I know we can get there, but in order to achieve equity and fairness, you know, to me, it's starting from ground zero. It's looking at our political systems, our laws, and rethinking them and thinking they haven't really worked for our people very well in the last 150 years. So what's needed to change that? I think we need to look differently at all of these things. You see where I'm going to get at here, the new world, so to speak, was already the old world. We were always here. This realization of being here, traveling in the path of so many that have passed before me,

my ancestors. It often runs through my mind, too, as I drive down this little shortcut of a road where I live. I live in Toronto. I live in a small east end neighborhood. And there's this road that I have driven down millions and millions of time, as has everyone else who lives in this part of our neighborhood. It's not more than half a block long, and it's a shortcut that runs past it's a squiggle, really. It's not really even a road. It connects two major arteries. And it runs past the back of a movie theater, a Harvys, a Swiss chalet, and it leads you to a pet store. And it was in 2018 that this little squiggle, this little road, was given a name. And it was called Cashego Road. And it was named after the Cashego family who lived.

lived there on the shores of Lake Ontario, whose artifacts were found that dated back thousands of years. They were here thousands and thousands of years ago before the British arrived. But just past the squiggle, there's this beautiful old Victorian house, and it's got a really nice gate, and it's set back, and it's all been preserved. And that house is to remember the Asperger's family

who came to the Toronto area in 1794. And for two centuries, they lived in and around this property. And many things in our neighborhood in the East End, they're named after the ash bridges. And all we have is a squiggle of a little road. I think about this often, and I think about the things that I talk about with Marie Sinclair. And I think about his words, and they echo in my ears.

Some driving down there. I think about where do I fit in all this, in this continuum that I've been talking about all the evening, this big circle. Where is it that I come from? What is my purpose? Who am I? And where do I belong? What keeps you looking forward? I mean, I kind of hate that, like, are you hopeful?

Like, I don't mean it that way, but, but what, what keeps you running in the, in the forward direction? Coffee. Hope, right? Like, you know, it sounds cheesy, but it's true, right? What other choice is there? And think of all of our kids. They're inheriting what we've left behind. And I really think that we are going to create something that's different.

What makes me feel hopeful is Wob Canoe, becoming premier of Manitoba. That is, wow. That is such a sea change for our people, especially in Manitoba. Especially, you know, that's the province where Tina Fontaine was found in the Red River, a 15-year-old girl. She became emblematic of the murdered missing indigenous women and girls crisis that has been happening in this country. Canada for so long. But in many respects, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Northern Ontario, Thunder Bay, Toronto. Like, this is all, we're all experiencing this, but seeing Wobb, that's hope. Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate your time and I appreciate your honesty and

your integrity and engaging with these questions. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Oh, yeah, hey, oh, way. Goet to go up in my nationa, man, man, why, ha, yeah, way, ha, yeah, ha, yeah, oh. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,

and why, yeah, why, yeah, way, oh, yeah, we high, yeah. Because everybody to go up in my nation, now, man, why, oh, yeah, Can't matter to go up in my nationa. You've been listening to the 2018 Massey Lecturer, journalist, and author Tanya Talaga, along with excerpts from her conversation with Ideas producer Nahit Mustafa. This episode is part of a series of conversations with and about former Massey lecturers

to mark the 60th anniversary of Massey College, a partner in the Massey. This episode was produced by Nahid Mustafa. Thank you to Massey College and former principal, Natali de Rosier. Interview recorded by Joe Costa and Philip Coulter. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Danielle Duval. The acting senior producer is Lisa Godfrey. The executive producer of ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayad.

For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC.com slash podcasts.