Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Seven Fallen Feathers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism, Cultural Genocide, and Racism
Generational Trauma and Circular Suffering
Indigenous Youth, Education Reform, and Support Networks
Tradition, Prophecy, Spirituality, and Hope
Summary
Analysis
One must take a drab route, “devoid of charm,” to reach the administration office of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, or NAN—a political organization that represents 49 First Nations communities encompassing two-thirds of Ontario. Tanya Talaga travels to the ill-maintained office on a dreary day in April of 2011 to speak with NAN’s grand chief, Stan Beardy. The daughter of a half-European, half-Ojibwe mother and a Polish father, Talaga flies from Toronto to talk with Beardy about the upcoming federal election. The incumbent candidate is the Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose five-year tenure has seen the stripping of environmental protections and underfunding of Canada’s 634 First Nations.
As Talaga travels to meet with the grand chief of the NAN, she describes the decrepit conditions that many First Nations communities across Canada have fallen into after years of neglect on the part of the government, and a resultant lack of resources. When Talaga asks Stan Beardy about Indigenous voter turnout in the upcoming federal election, she’s showing that she, too, is in some way a victim of an internalized colonial mindset. Talaga herself is Indigenous, but she is, in this moment, looking at Indigenous involvement in a colonial structure rather than the actual issues facing Indigenous people that are right in front of her: profound poverty and lack of resources.
Themes
Talaga tries to talk to Beardy about Indigenous voting statistics, pointing out that Indigenous people have the power to influence the election if they come out in large numbers. But Beardy doesn’t want to talk about voting—he wants to know why Talaga isn’t instead writing about Jordan Wabasse, a 15-year-old Indigenous boy who has been missing for 71 days. Stan tells Talaga that Jordan is the seventh student since 2000 to go missing or die while at school in Thunder Bay.
Stan Beardy doesn’t have any interest in talking to Talaga about how a colonialist issue—an upcoming election—affects Indigenous people. Instead, he wants her to focus on the ways in which the very government she’s trying to get Indigenous people to participate in profoundly neglects Indigenous communities—and vulnerable Indigenous children.
Themes
Talaga is stricken—seven is a symbolic number in Indigenous culture. The prophecy of the seven fires is important to many First Nations people: the seven “fires” represent important moments in the history of the people on “Turtle Island” (the Indigenous name for North America). The first three fires speak of times before the arrival of Europeans. The fourth fire predicts the arrival of the light-skinned race, and the fifth speaks of war and suffering at the hands of that race. The sixth fire speaks of the "mask of death” worn by white-skinned invaders and the erasure of Indigenous lives and teachings. The seventh fire speaks of young Indigenous people rising up and learning to find their own way through the “trails of the past.”
This passage represents the importance of tradition, culture, and spirituality in contemporary Indigenous culture. Even though Talaga is disconnected from certain Indigenous issues—she’s a relatively well-to-do reporter and she lives in a big city—she recognizes central cultural touchstones immediately. As Talaga walks her readers through the seven fires, she shows that in spite of all of the pain and violence of colonialism and cultural genocide, Indigenous people remain optimistic that the “trails of the past” will enable the younger generations to find their way to a more peaceful future (and a return to traditional Indigenous values).
Themes
Beardy tells Talaga that all of the students who have disappeared or died were from remote communities in Northern Ontario, where there are few high schools. They’d all come to Thunder Bay to pursue an education and escape the poverty of the reservations. On reservations, food insecurity and malnutrition are rampant—so diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and dental problems plague many Indigenous people. Clean running water is a rarity. Hospitals, fire departments, and schools are few and far between. Even though Canada’s government was, until the 1990s, supposed to fund and maintain schools for Indigenous children, this promise has never really been fulfilled.
The government of Canada never fulfilled its promises to fund and support Indigenous communities. As a result, there’s a profound lack of resources on many reserves. The trauma of the past, too, plays a role in the state of contemporary reserves—because so many Indigenous Canadians bear the scars of colonial violence, cultural genocide, and the abuses of the residential schooling system, mental health and substance abuse issues abound on reserves in addition to the other health problems caused by generational poverty and government neglect. These are the environments that many Indigenous youth come from when they begin their schooling far away from home in large, unfamiliar cities.
Themes
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Stan Beardy takes Talaga on a drive. As they drive, he tells her about his son, Daniel, who was 19 years old when he died in 2004 after being beaten badly at a house party. Daniel was close to graduating from Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School (DFC) in Thunder Bay, a school for Indigenous students run by the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council (NNEC). Most of the students who attend DFC come from reserves hundreds of kilometers away and live in boarding houses with local parents. (Six of the seven students Talaga will write about in Seven Fallen Feathers attended DFC.) For Stan, the loss of these seven students represents the failure of one generation to properly look out for the next.
As Stan Beardy tells Talaga about the losses of several students in the Thunder Bay area—and at DFC specifically—it becomes clear that he is in mourning for the youth that have been lost to the deep-rooted effects of generational trauma and circular suffering. Beardy’s generation was forced into residential schools—and they all bear the trauma of that experience. That trauma made the older generation less able to protect the younger generation—trauma passed from one generation to the next. In addition, the older generation’s failure to protect the younger generation from racism, violence, and danger creates a sort of re-traumatization of the older generation, creating circular suffering throughout Indigenous communities across Canada.
Themes
Stan parks the car near a bridge crossing the Kam. From that spot, Talaga can see Animikii-wajiw, or Thunder Mountain, a spiritual center for the Ojibwe of Fort William First Nation. Stan tells Talaga that he believes that Jordan was chased into the river; searchers recently found one of Jordan’s running shoes at this exact spot.
Even though spiritual and sacred places surround Thunder Bay, the city is still a hotbed of racist violence where Indigenous people are particularly vulnerable. This passage represents the first moment in which a body of water is rendered as a symbol for how racism, colonial violence, and lacking support networks can often result in the literal swallowing up or drowning of Indigenous youths struggling to stay alive in a system that doesn’t look out for them at any turn.
Themes
After the search for Jordan first got under way, a blind Elder of the Webequie First Nation told—the leader of the community search for Jordan in Thunder Bay that he’d had a vision. The vision was of Jordan scuffling with two young people near an industrial warehouse on the banks of the Kam on the night that he vanished. The blind man’s vision also included an image of Jordan’s body lying on the ground, his spirit on top of the river’s water. The Elder warned the search leader, “The more you search, the more he vanishes.”
Again, this passage demonstrates how Indigenous people often seek to navigate painful, difficult situations—situations that are frequently the results of colonialist violence and neglect—by turning to their spiritual and cultural traditions for guidance. In the absence of any real support from the Canadian institutions that should be helping Indigenous communities, Indigenous people must rely on one another and on their shared cultural beliefs.
Themes
Jordan Wabasse arrived in Thunder Bay in September of 2010 to attend the Matawa Learning Centre. Jordan didn’t feel he was getting a good enough education at home, so he begged his mother Bernice to send him to Thunder Bay to continue school. Jordan wanted to play hockey—and Bernice wanted to support his dreams. She sent him to Thunder Bay to board with his distant cousin, Clifford Wabasse, and Clifford’s wife, Jessica. Boarding parents were paid monthly to host students, but they were not obligated to supervise their boarders, help them with homework, or transport them to or from school and extracurriculars.
Even though the residential schools were abolished in the 20th century, this passage shows that when modern Indigenous youths want to pursue quality higher educations or begin athletic careers, the lack of educational resources on the reserves means that they still must make a choice between staying at home and maintaining their connections to their families and communities or venturing out into a new, dangerous city where there’s little structural, educational, or emotional support available to them. The government may no longer force the relocation of Indigenous students, but it’s neglect means that Indigenous people are still forced into similar choices and that the pattern of trauma continues.
Themes
On the frigid morning of February 7, 2011, Jordan left home for school at his usual time. Jordan had been raised far away from Thunder Bay in the remote, traditional community of Webequie—and though adjusting to the city was a process, Jordan was responsible and punctual. When he didn’t come home for dinner before hockey practice that night, Jessica found it strange—and when he didn’t call his girlfriend Myda that night at 11, Myda grew worried as well.
Even though Jordan was far away from home, he appeared to be doing well in his new surroundings. Yet his death shows that Indigenous youths are vulnerable in places like Thunder Bay. Having to face disproportionate instances of violence and an absence of support from the educational structures in place for them, Indigenous children are largely on their own.
Themes
Jordan was last seen alive getting off of a Thunder Bay Transit bus just a block away from his boarding house. He’d been at the mall—a popular hangout for northern teens like Jordan who grew up in places that didn’t have stores or restaurants, let alone a shopping mall. After visiting the mall, he’d gone drinking with a couple of friends. Some of his classmates saw him on the bus around 9:30 p.m., and the last image of Jordan on transit footage was caught at about 10.
Jordan was an ordinary teen who enjoyed doing typical teenage things with his friends—but there were also many unique difficulties that Jordan was facing. He was far from home in an unfamiliar place—and the people who were in charge of looking out for him, his boarding family, weren’t able to look out for him as closely as they should have. As the book continues, Talaga will delve more deeply into the unique vulnerabilities that Indigenous youth face as they navigate life away from home.
Themes
Clifford called the Thunder Bay Police on February 8 to report Jordan missing. The Detective Constable who came to the house that night didn’t seem to realize that Jordan had already been missing for a full 24 hours. A ground search did not begin for another 48 hours—and no Amber Alert was issued, nor were any K-9 units sent out to join the search.
This passage illustrates the negligence with which the Thunder Bay police began their investigation into Jordan’s disappearance—a negligence that will be evident in every case described in the book. They didn’t employ the full force of the resources they could have—the resources, Talaga implies, they might have if Jordan weren’t Indigenous.
Themes
Six days after Jordan’s disappearance, a search team turned up a ballcap that appeared to have belonged to Jordan, as well as some nearby footprints in the snow. Police called in a dive team to plunge the depths of the icy river near where the cap had been found, but nothing turned up. Meanwhile, Indigenous communities from all over the north banded together to fundraise and lead searches.
Here, Talaga illustrates how in the absence of support from white state and government forces, Indigenous people come together in community to look out for and support one another in ways that reflect their own cultural values and traditions.
Themes
On March 20, a team from Cat Lake First Nation found Jordan’s running shoe after following the map of the blind Elder’s vision. When the team notified police about finding the shoe—and drag marks in the snow nearby—the police dismissed the marks as “kids sliding.” The team turned up blood and teeth from a nearby site, and while these weren’t found to belong to Jordan, DNA profiling of Jordan’s mother revealed that the hat was unmistakably his.
Again, as Talaga relays more and more details about the search for Jordan, she highlights the gulf between the Thunder Bay Police’s inadequate, lazy measures and the collective, dedicated, almost spiritual approach of the Indigenous community who banded together to look for Jordan.
Themes
The Indigenous search team continued to look for Jordan, combing the Kam riverbanks and passing out missing person flyers tirelessly. Rumors about Jordan’s connections to a gang called the Native Syndicate began flying. Another native boy named Jordan Waboose, who did have connections to the gang, believed that Jordan Wabasse had been killed accidentally, and that the gang was really still after him.
Again, Talaga uses this passage to show how Indigenous people from Jordan’s community—and other Indigenous youths living in Thunder Bay—were doing more to search for Jordan than the police were. There were lots of potential leads the police didn’t fully follow up on—leads that could have explained Jordan’s disappearance.
Themes
In early May, as spring began to arrive, boaters called police to report a body floating in the river near the swing bridge—the location that the blind Elder had seen in his visions. After 92 days, Jordan’s body was pulled from the river; it was badly decomposed, but still clothed in the hoodie and left sneaker Jordan was wearing on the day he disappeared. At 9 p.m. that night, a Thunder Bay Police sergeant went to visit Jordan’s mother at the hotel where she was staying. Dental records confirmed that the body was Jordan’s.
The police wound up finding Jordan right where the blind Elder’s visions led them. This illustrates the profound importance of traditional and spiritual Indigenous practices—and suggests that when it comes to Indigenous issues, Indigenous people know how to help their own far better than white colonizers do.
Themes
Three days later, police received a tip from a residence for teenagers—one of the residents heard that two men had pushed Jordan off the bridge. But the resident didn’t want to talk to the police—she fled the group home. Police followed up on the lead and tracked down the teenager, Josee, and she gave them the names of the men who’d allegedly pushed Jordan. The police interrogated the men, Austin Millar and Steven Cole, but they denied having anything to do with Jordan. Five years later, a friend of one of the men would admit in a court room that Steven confessed to pushing Jordan. Other loose ends in the case, such as the similarly-named Jordan Waboose (and an acquaintance of his named Kenny Wabasse, who shared Jordan’s last name), offered no promising leads.
Here, Talaga explains the many loose ends in Jordan’s case that the Thunder Bay Police never fully followed up on. There were many suspicious people who’d heard rumors about Jordan being murdered, and there were people who lived in the area with names similar to his—this implies that Jordan could’ve been killed by people who were looking to punish someone else. No matter what happened to Jordan, what is clear is that the Thunder Bay police didn’t push their investigation as far as they could have—and in the process, they might have let a potential killer slip through the cracks.
Themes
To this day, Jordan’s death has no explanation. It doesn’t make sense that Jordan would’ve wound up on the swing bridge—it wasn’t on his route home. Jordan’s death was ultimately marked “Accidental,” with the cause of death listed as “cold water drowning.” But during the inquest into the deaths of the seven Indigenous students, a lawyer would say that she didn’t accept that as the cause of Jordan’s death for an instant.
Jordan wasn’t just swallowed up by the Kam River—he was swallowed up by a flawed education system that couldn’t look out for him, and a racist justice system that didn’t take the time to fully investigate what happened to him.
Themes
