The Bookmark and UPEI’s Faculty of Indigenous Knowledge, Education, Research, and Applied Studies (IKERAS) will host a book launch for Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga’s new book, The Knowing, on Thursday, November 7, at 7 pm, in the UPEI Performing Arts Centre amphitheatre (Room 121S). The evening will be moderated by Jenene Wooldridge, executive director of L’nuey.

This event is free and open to everyone, but tickets are required. To book tickets, go to https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/tanya-talaga-in-conversation-with-jenene-wooldridge-tickets-1042270046767 or call the Bookmark at 902-566-4888.

The Knowing is a riveting exploration of Talaga’s family’s story and a retelling of the history of the country now called 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, was hidden by shame and abandonment.

In The Knowing, Talaga retells the history of this country 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.

Talaga is of Anishinaabe and Polish descent, was born and raised in Toronto, and is a member of Fort William First Nation. She is the acclaimed author of the national bestseller Seven Fallen Feathers, which won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and the First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult Award. She is also the author of the national bestseller All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward. For more than 20 years, she was a journalist at the Toronto Star and is now a regular columnist at the Globe and Mail. Talaga is the founder of Makwa Creative, a production company formed to elevate Indigenous voices and stories.

Please note that challenging topics will be discussed at this event, including, but not limited to, historical traumas, the Residential School system, sexual abuse, and suicide.