The First Nations are groups of Indigenous Canadian people. The First Nations groups are distinct from the Inuit and Métis, two other groups of Indigenous Canadians.
First Nations Quotes in Seven Fallen Feathers
The Seven Fallen Feathers quotes below are all either spoken by First Nations or refer to First Nations. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 9: Less Than Worthy Victims
Quotes
And yet still the inequities rage. Northern First Nations families are faced with the horrific choice of either sending their children to high school in a community that cannot guarantee their safety, or keeping them at home and hoping distance education will be enough. Families are still being told—more than twenty years after the last residential school was shut down—that they must surrender their children for them to gain an education. Handing over the reins to Indigenous education authorities such as the NNEC without giving them the proper funding tools is another form of colonial control and racism.
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After the attack on Darryl Kakekayash, Alvin and Julian saw a clear and disturbing pattern. They could not help but wonder if First Nations kids were being targeted and murdered. It was extremely rare to hear of Indigenous kids drowning on their reserves. Most First Nations people were born and raised on the water. Equally perplexing was how quickly the Thunder Bay Police wrote off investigations into the deaths. For Jethro, Curran, Reggie, and Kyle, police had issued press releases that came to the same conclusion: foul play was not suspected. Each of the deaths was classified as accidental: death by drinking too much and then drowning. To Thunder Bay Police, no one was readily responsible for the deaths of the students.
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Get the entire Seven Fallen Feathers LitChart as a printable PDF.
First Nations Term Timeline in Seven Fallen Feathers
The timeline below shows where the term First Nations appears in Seven Fallen Feathers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Prologue
There is only one road to the nearby Fort William First Nation , one of the 133 Indigenous reserves in Ontario. A bridge over the Kam used...
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Chapter 1: Notes from a Blind Man
...the administration office of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, or NAN—a political organization that represents 49 First Nation s communities encompassing two-thirds of Ontario. Tanya Talaga travels to the ill-maintained office on a...
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...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...
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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...
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Chapter 2: Why Chanie Ran
...air, she considers the boundary between different worlds this place represents. The treaties that Canada’s First Nation s signed with the British Crown isolated Indigenous people on remote reserves, forcing them to...
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...the pursuit of education. The Crown used this act, and the various treaties signed by First Nation s all over Canada, to create residential schools and begin assimilating the next generation of...
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...of “sav[ing]” Native children by Christianizing them. At the school, originally located near Shoal Lake First Nation , the students learned, did chores, and attended worship each night (as well as Sunday...
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Chapter 3: When the Wolf Comes
Ninth-grade DFC student Jethro Anderson, from Kasabonika Lake First Nation , was on his own away from home for the first time. Shawon Wavy, Jethro’s...
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Chapter 4: Hurting from the Before
...responsible for Indigenous and Northern Affairs—wasn’t making any progress in addressing the concerns of Canada’s First Nation s communities. The NNEC, too, was facing slews of recommendations for how to handle the...
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By the early 2000s, waves of suicide were sweeping across First Nation s communities throughout Northern Ontario; children as young as 10 were killing themselves. In traditional...
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...Ontario discovered that 23.5 percent of the province’s Indigenous suicides were taking place in Pikangikum First Nation , sometimes called “Pik.” In the early 2000s, Pik had no clean water and no...
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Chapter 5: The Hollowness of Not Knowing
Talaga travels to Maryanne Panacheese’s home on the Mishkeegogamang First Nation reserve—a onetime colonial settlement that is actually two reserves joined into one. The Panacheeses have...
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Chapter 6: We Speak for the Dead to Protect the Living
...too much, and Skye promised to watch out for her. Robyn, who was from Keewaywin First Nation , had just completed her first week of grade 11 at DFC. Robyn’s mother wanted...
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Chapter 7: Brothers
...protection professional—launched a human rights complaint against the government of Canada on behalf of the First Nation s Child and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations, which represents 634...
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...process in their own battles. These cases were important and meaningful in shifting precedents regarding First Nation s people’s right to a trial by a jury of their peers. But they’d also...
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On May 29, 2008, the Assembly of First Nation s held a National Day of Action for Indigenous People in Ottawa, and Shannen Koostachin...
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...poverty that still defined life for the children of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and other First Nation s communities around the country. He thought about the generational trauma the schools had created...
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Chapter 8: River, Give Me My Son Back
Within two years, Keewaywin First Nation —a community of 350 people—lost two teenagers at DFC: Robyn Harper in 2007, and Kyle...
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Chapter 9: Less Than Worthy Victims
...in a car accident after leaving her reserve to attend high school somewhere else. Northern First Nation s families must choose between sending their children away to a place where their safety...
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...“patterns to the deaths” that needed to be investigated. Alvin Fiddler and Julian believed that First Nation s kids were being targeted and murdered. Too many kids were dying in the same...
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...reported, was the truth—and if they didn’t get it, the mistrust between Canada and its First Nation s would worsen. Any hope of reconciliation, Iacobucci warned, could soon be lost. He proposed...
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Epilogue
...conducting daily foot patrols of these areas. They also requested descriptors and identifiers for all First Nation s students from the north attending Thunder Bay schools.
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