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Canada Tanya Talaga is an Anishinaabe journalist, author, and filmmaker who amplifies Indigenous voices through her work.
Talaga heads up Makwa Creative Inc., a production company focused on amplifying Indigenous voices through documentary films, TV and podcasts. Makwa's first documentary film 'Spirit To Soar' premiered at the 2021 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and won the Audience Award in the mid-length film category. Other projects include 'War For The Woods' (Canadian Screen Award nominated) and 'Auntie Up!' podcast. Her book 'The Knowing' was adapted into a four-part CBC documentary series by Makwa Creative.
Tanya Talaga is the host, narrator, and author of "Seven Truths," an Audible Canada original podcast. This seven-episode series tells contemporary stories through the lens of the Anishinaabe Seven Grandfather Teachings, released on November 26, 2020.
HarperCollinsCanada is the publisher for Tanya Talaga's book "The Knowing," which was announced to be coming to shelves and screens on August 14, 2024.
CBC collaborated with Makwa Creative and HarperCollinsCanada to bring Tanya Talaga's book "The Knowing" to audiences, including its adaptation into a four-part CBC documentary series. Talaga was also the 2018 CBC Massey Lecturer, delivering 'All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward'.
Tanya Talaga is a journalist, author, and filmmaker of Anishinaabe and Polish descent, and a proud member of Fort William First Nation. Her maternal family is from Fort William First Nation, and her great-grandmother, Liz Gauthier, was a residential school survivor. Talaga was raised in Toronto and spent summers with her mother’s family in Raith, Ontario. She studied history and political science at the University of Toronto, where she wrote and edited the university’s student newspaper, The Varsity, and volunteered on The Strand.
Talaga’s career in journalism spans over two decades, primarily with the Toronto Star, where she covered diverse beats including health, education, local issues, and investigative journalism. She was nominated five times for the Michener Award in public service journalism and contributed to teams that won two National Newspaper Awards for Project of the Year. Notably, she worked as a general city reporter for 14 years before moving to the Queen’s Park Bureau in 2009. She is currently a regular columnist with The Globe and Mail.
Talaga is the author of three national bestsellers: “Seven Fallen Feathers,” “All Our Relations: Finding The Path Forward,” and “The Knowing.” “Seven Fallen Feathers” won the RBC Taylor Prize and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. “All Our Relations” was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize and the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize. In 2018, she became the first Anishinaabe woman to be named a CBC Massey Lecturer. She is the founder and CEO of Makwa Creative Inc., a production company dedicated to elevating Indigenous voices through documentary films, TV, and podcasts. Makwa Creative’s projects include the documentary “Spirit to Soar,” which premiered at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in 2021, and the podcast “Auntie Up!” Her work “The Knowing” was also adapted into a four-part CBC documentary series, earning a 2025 Canadian Screen Award for Best Writing-Documentary. Talaga holds honorary doctorates from Lakehead University and Ryerson University.
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