All Our Relations: Indigenous trauma in the shadow of colonialism

by Tanya Talaga

The world’s Indigenous communities are fighting to live and dying too young. In this vital and incisive work, Tanya Talaga explores intergenerational trauma and the alarming rise of youth suicide.

From Northern Ontario to Nunavut, Norway, Brazil, Australia, and the United States, the Indigenous experience in colonised nations is startlingly similar and deeply disturbing. It is an experience marked by the violent separation of Peoples from the land, the separation of families, and the separation of individuals from traditional ways of life — all of which has culminated in a spiritual separation that has had an enduring impact on generations of Indigenous children. As a result of this colonial legacy, too many communities today lack access to the basic determinants of health — income, employment, education, a safe environment, health services — leading to a mental health and youth suicide crisis on a global scale. But, Talaga reminds us, First Peoples also share a history of resistance, resilience, and civil rights activism, from the Occupation of Alcatraz led by the Indians of All Tribes, to the Northern Ontario Stirland Lake Quiet Riot, to the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which united Indigenous Nations from across Turtle Island in solidarity.

All Our Relations is a powerful call for action, justice, and a better, more equitable world for all Indigenous Peoples.

Genres: Nonfiction, Indigenous, Audiobook, Canada, History, Politics, Essays

221 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2018

About the author

Tanya Talaga is an Anishinaabe Canadian journalist and author.

Her 2017 book, Seven Fallen Feathers, won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult. The book was also a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize and the BC National Award for Nonfiction, and it was CBC’s Nonfiction Book of the Year, a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book, and a national bestseller. For more than twenty years she has been a journalist at the Toronto Star, and has been nominated five times for the Michener Award in public service journalism. She was also named the 2017–2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy.

Talaga is of Polish and Indigenous descent. Her great-grandmother, Liz Gauthier, was a residential school survivor. Her great-grandfather, Russell Bowen, was an Ojibwe trapper and labourer. Her grandmother is a member of Fort William First Nation. Her mother was raised in Raith and Graham, Ontario. She lives in Toronto with her two teenage children.

Reviews

[Tammie]

I'm 100% convinced that Tanya Talaga's books should be required reading in Canada.

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

All Our Relations is a compilation of the five Massey Lectures that Tanya Talaga presented across Canada in coordination with the CBC. Focussing on the suicide crisis among the Indigenous Peoples (and particularly of the Indigenous youth) of Canada's Northern communities, this book is vital to our national conversation: eye-opening, far-ranging, and prescriptive, this is the kind of book that I wish I could put directly into every Canadian's hands and say, “Read this.”

It should come as no surprise to Canadians at this point that the Residential School System (in which Indigenous children were taken from their families and sent to mostly church-run, mostly abusive boarding schools in order to forcibly assimilate them) and the Sixties Scoop (in which Indigenous children were taken from their communities to be raised by white families in order to forcibly assimilate them) have perpetuated a cycle of trauma throughout the succeeding generations: people who have had the self-worth beaten out of them are less capable of raising children to feel their own self-worth. And while most Canadians respond to this with, “That's a terrible thing, but it happened long ago so let's call it history, offer an apology, and move forward”, Talaga insists that this history is still playing itself out. Starting with the anachronistic and paternalistic Indian Act that still governs every aspect of the relationship between the Canadian Government and who they decide count as “Indians”, there is apparent racism against First Nations in every federal department: Justice, Health Care, Housing, Family Services; with Indigenous peoples over-represented in jails, dying of preventable diseases, living in substandard and crowded conditions – often without proper sanitation or clean water – and alarmingly, Indigenous children are still taken from their families of origin at a high rate and placed into revolving foster care. The historical effects of colonization are very much alive for our Indigenous peoples: people who have been removed from their ancestral lands, who have had their language and culture forcibly erased, who have been represented in popular culture as savages (noble or otherwise), these are people who are being denied basic human rights. And when these societal pressures lead to suicide pacts (among children as young as nine), and when desperate requests to the federal government for suicide prevention funding is met with silence, there's very little difference between our current government's response and that of Duncan Campbell Scott, former head of Indian Affairs, who in 1907 refused to close the Residential Schools during a TB epidemic because of their importance as a “final solution to our Indian Problem”.

Throughout All Our Relations, Talaga gives an interesting historical overview of the fates of Indigenous peoples around the world – from the Sami of Finland, the Aborigines of Australia and the Torris Strait Islands, to the Guarani of Brazil and the thousands of First Nation communities here on “Turtle Island”. And throughout every one of these colonized country's histories, there's the theme of a denial of basic human rights; as though Indigenous people are self-evidently inferior to the settlers who came and took away everything. How can that not impact the self-worth of Indigenous children even today? At one point, Talaga met with a physician in Sioux Lookout, Ontario; a man who grapples daily with the suicide crisis to be found there:

When Mike Kirlew looks at the way health care is administered in the North, he sees a population of people who have been denied services from the very start. “The system isn't broken; it is designed to do what it is doing,” he said.

One of his patients, an Elder, once told him, “I don't want to talk about reconciliation. I want to talk about rights.” Mike couldn't agree more: “The goal of reconciliation isn't just to be friends. Civil rights legislation needs to occur here.”

It's pretty common in Canada to think of the “Indian Problem” as a financial black hole; a constant demand for funding by greedy and unaccountable chiefs that taxpayers (justifiably or not) resent. What Talaga does most brilliantly here is to reframe the issue as one of universal human rights – what we Canadians somehow feel justified to lecture the world on – and once the whole picture is assembled, it would take a very petty mind to reduce this to money. This is about lives, and there are people who are working on the path forward:

The National Inuit Suicide Prevention Strategy identifies key priority areas: creating social equity, creating cultural continuity, nurturing healthy Inuit children from birth, ensuring access to a continuum of mental wellness services, healing unresolved trauma and grief, and mobilizing Inuit knowledge for resilience and suicide prevention. What is clear is that at the heart of the suicides is a lack of the determinants of health and social equity – health care, housing, and a safe environment.

I remember that when I read The Inconvenient Indian, I was sometimes turned off by author Thomas King's (however justifiably) angry tone while outlining the history of North America's First Nations post-colonization. Talaga employs a more journalistic, but no less urgent, tone, and that made this book more accessible for me: I don't feel a burden of blame, but I do feel a burden of action. In both an opening epigraph and in the concluding words of this book, Talaga quotes Thomas King from his own Massey Lecture Series in 2003, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative:

But don't say in the years to come that you would
have lived your life differently if you had only heard
this story.
You've heard it now.

I can only hope that more people will take the time to hear this story.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 5 out of 5]

With each passing day I’m more and more appalled at the lip service paid by the Canadian government towards actually contributing to the health and wellness of First Nations populations across Canada. Suicide is rampant and Tanya Talaga clearly illustrates how suicide became the leading cause of death in First Nations communities. It’s a hard but necessary read.

The history of abuse, especially sexual abuse, and the attempted genocide committed by the Canadian government and it’s residential schools have deep, long-standing, very real effects that can be felt throughout generations. From the elders, survivors of residential schools who lived to recount the nightmare the government bestowed upon their families, down to the youngest member of any family.

We don’t hear about this in school in the manner that we need to. I went to a Catholic high school, there was hardly any mention of the crisis many families are still in due to the residential school system. We didn’t discuss the abject poverty, inter-generational trauma, depression, substance abuse, food scarcity, etc. It was all discussed as ancient history. We don’t learn about how things got this bad because the schools and the government don’t want us to know..

I’m making it a point in my life to learn the history that was glossed over in school. There’s something inside me trying to understand my friends of all backgrounds. Something that’s continually searching for stories from my surroundings, people with lived experience, people documenting the lived experiences of those in their communities, whether they grew up on a Rez or in my inner-city hood. I think there’s something to be said for hearing a story directly from it’s community and Tanya Talaga has shared experiences that are opening my eyes to the things that are attempting to be hidden or soft-spoken about, when they should be screamed about in public.

I remember circle-dancing in the middle of Yonge & Dundas Square during the Idle No More protests a few years ago, hand-in-hand with my friends and even tho I couldn’t understand the levels of the reasons they were crying and holding each other so tight, narratives like these help pull their realities, Canadian realities, into focus. We need this. Thank you Tanya!

No one should live in the conditions many First Nations kids and families are forced to live and die in. Indigenous kids dying from strep throat? That’s ridiculous! Subpar access to medical care and mental health resources, especially in a suicide-crisis situation such as this, is shameful in Canada as we go around touting ourselves as leaders in health care and health service provisions. It’s enraging.

My eyes are continuously being opened to the shit that Canada has actively done to First Nations communities. Reading their stories, becoming informed, will help us to make better decisions when it comes to choosing leaders today and in the future.

Who is willing to put our money where it needs to be and invest in the aid that is needed within communities ravaged by bad government policy and abusive practices that they, the government, have yet to repeal? Where is the equity? Reparations? Read this book and ponder this question next time you’re asked to choose someone who will represent your ideas and your dollars during an election.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 4 out of 5]

One year ago I read Tanya Talaga’s Seven Fallen Feathers , in which she remembers the seven Indigenous youths who died far from home while attending Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School here in Thunder Bay. In that heartbreaking and essential work, she links these deaths to a structure of colonialism and white supremacy and an ongoing form of cultural genocide in which the government and the rest of us remain complicit. Now Talaga is back with this year’s CBC Massey Lectures; All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward widens the scope of this discussion to look at the high rate of Indigenous suicides all over the world. Beyond talking just about suicide, though, Talaga wants us to consider how colonialism interferes with Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and how this is ultimately the root cause of the suicides and other issues in Indigenous communities. As its subtitle implies, Talaga is not without hope. This book is an outstretched arm, asking everyone—white settler, Indigenous person, person of colour, etc.—to ask difficult questions of ourselves and our institutions and to create real change so we can save real lives.

I love the chapter titles: “We Were Always Here”, “Big Brother’s Hunger”, “The Third Space”, “'I Breathe for Them'”, and “We Are Not Going Anywhere” (yesssss!). These titles alone communicate the arc of Talaga’s talks: first she grounds herself in the history, then she examines the effects of colonialism, before she discusses what so many people within these communities are doing already to try to improve conditions. Finally, Talaga asserts that there is hope, and there are so many viable possibilities out there to prevent youth suicide. What’s really needed is actual commitment to change rather than empty words and promises. As she quotes Mushkegowuk Grand Council Chief Jonathan Solomon saying, “We don’t need another study or inquiry. Everything has been studied and these studies are just collecting dust on a shelf”. The government is very good at promising change; it is much worse at actually delivering change for the better.

Talaga does in this book what a journalist does best: she amplifies the voices of so many people across time and space from these communities, uniting their stories into a bigger picture. We hear the palpable frustration, anger, and sadness from so many individuals; we hear the strident confidence, hope, and determination from some of those same individuals who are even now fighting for change and for lives. Alongside these often personal tales, Talaga grounds us in the history of Canada, Norway, Brazil, and Australia. The conditions that create suicidal thoughts in these communities came from somewhere, and this is where All Our Relations shines.

Talaga demolishes, directly and forcefully, the idea that traumas inflicted upon Indigenous peoples by settler governments should be located and left in the past. She makes it clear that the physical, biological, and cultural genocides of Indigenous peoples have left a lasting, inter-generational mark on these peoples: “Generations of Indigenous children have grown up largely in communities without access to the basic determinants of health…. Children are not in control of their determinants of health. They are born into them.” I mean, this is not hard to grasp, yet it seems like a lot of people in this country are willing to lay the blame for this on the communities themselves rather than the structures in place that prevent them from having the funding, infrastructure, and independence—the security and sovereignty—to guarantee these determinants themselves.

It’s not just a lack of safe drinking water or inadequate access to healthcare, though, that’s at issue. As the title of the book indicates, this is a spiritual issue as well. Suicide rates among Indigenous people are so high because colonialism has harmed not only their physical wellbeing but also their spiritual and emotional connections to the land, to their histories, and to their cultures. Talaga makes this point throughout each and every lecture. In the first chapter she says, “Indigenous people have been trapped in these identity constructions in part because of their near-complete absence from the written narratives of the colonist nations”, arguing that it’s essential Indigenous voices can tell their stories (in their own language as well as that of the colonizers) to pass on Indigenous knowledge and culture. At the end of the last chapter, she says, “All children … need to know who their ancestors are, who their heroes and villains are; they need to know about their family’s traditions and cultures and the community they are a part of”. I mean, when you put it that way … it’s simple, really. This is what we settlers need to realize: Indigenous people have always only ever been asking for the same dignity and respect that we accord each other, the opportunity to live in their ways, pass on their ways, raise their children in their ways. And we have responded, over these past centuries, with the most intense failure mode of empathy a society can experience.

It’s past time we change that.

I had the privilege of taking my class of adult high school students to a book talk with Talaga ahead of her Massey Lecture here in Thunder Bay tonight. I loved listening to her speak, in response to questions from an interviewer as well as audience questions, about the issues around her books and how they relate to her life, to this land, and to these communities. Her voice as I heard it on stage comes through in these books. Read both of them, and you’ll learn so much history while also understand the vital importance of taking action to change these systems.

Throughout her talk to us today, Talaga emphasized that this is an issue of equity. Talaga asks us to examine who we are and where we come from. She reminds us that this is an important exercise, regardless of our race or background. She reminds us that Indigenous people around the world are looking only for what so many people already have: dignity, respect, the ability to retain their culture and beliefs. These are not difficult things to achieve, if we stop standing in the way. All Our Relations makes a case that shouldn’t need to be made, but Talaga makes it with eloquence and empathy.

[Scribe Publications]

An essential work of non-fiction … Through storytelling, on-the-ground reporting, literature surveys, and plenty of statistics, Talaga demonstrates the extent to which Indigenous children continue to live under the full weight of colonial history … All children, she writes, ‘need to know who their ancestors are, who their heroes and villains are.’ In All Our Relations, Talaga restores that basic right to Indigenous children who have been robbed of it. And the rest of us, as an epigraph from author Thomas King makes clear, no longer have the excuse of saying we haven’t heard this story. Talaga alone has told it twice now.
Quill & Quire

All Our Relations is an impeccably researched and unflinching documentation of how both colonial histories and ongoing genocidal practices have created the suicide crisis among Indigenous youth across the globe. Tanya Talaga expertly folds together interviews, storytelling, and statistics to bring us directly to the startling truth that Indigenous youth are fighting to find themselves through the multiple separations forced on them by settler states: separation of parents from children, separation of peoples from their land, and separation of tongues and hearts from their languages and traditions. All Our Relations is a call to action and a testament to the strength and tenacity of Indigenous people around the world.
2019 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Jury Citation

This book is both moving and effective; it creates the space for readers to understand the complexity of these issues … An excellent read.
Ottawa Review of Books

Talaga’s passion for the topic is palpable as she shares eye-opening stories and heartbreaking statistics ... Thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Parvati Magazine

While drawing on academic studies, All Our Relations is a burning missive about what is happening now, on the ground, and what needs to be done to make for safe and healthy indigenous communities.
Fiona Capp, The Age

A heartbreaking book … [Tanya Talaga’s] writing style is clear and easy to read, and she has a way of telling the reader what they need to know about policy and history by telling stories about people and communities, who are at the heart of this book.
Ranuka Tandan, Hon Soit

[Fraser Simons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t think this could be improved upon. I have put it off because I’ve read quite a bit on the subject, and though there is some retreading of common knowledge because she needs to obtain a baseline from which to discuss things—it does transition into the primary subject matter: Suicide in indigenous populations and their sources. Across the world, not solely in Canada. And through that lens engaging with new thinking and knowledge with regards to indigenous peoples obtaining some new agency, which they ought to have had all along.

I’d encourage any reader to pick this up in any format. There’s lots of new thoughts here and presented in a really engaging lecture.

[Nicolas Levy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tanya Talaga tackles Canada's most fundamental issue in this year's version of the Massey Lectures: the inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, as manifested by an epidemic of Indigenous youth suicides. As Talaga notes in her book, in some areas of the country, Indigenous youth are up t0 30 times more likely to commit suicide than their non-Indigenous peers - a shocking end result of the structural inequalities that colour all aspects of Indigenous life.

In this work, Talaga compellingly weaves narratives of the most proximate causes of youth suicide - including inadequate access to emergency healthcare on reserves, the cascading effects of suicide within social networks, and disregard from federal and provincial government agencies - with a broader examination of how Canada's history has led to these conditions. Some of the most powerful moments of the book come from interviews with Indigenous leaders who share their own stories of intergenerational trauma, from abuse at the hands of residential schools (some as recent as the 1990s) to self-doubt, suicidal thoughts, and a lack of basic healthcare services anywhere near their homes. Moreover, Talaga and many of her interview subjects force the reader to think hard about why, and not just how, we have allowed this shameful history to unfold.

However, I think this book could have been strengthened in a couple ways (acknowledging that the annual cycle of the Massey Lectures likely speeds up the deadlines for completing such a work). First, I was hopeful that Talaga's international approach to this issue - including voices from the Sami people in Scandinavia, Australian Aboriginees, and Indigenous groups in Brazil would lead to interesting connections that wouldn't have been apparent with a single-country focus. While her interviews with these groups do strengthen the case that Indigenous inequity is a global issue, I got the impression that this link was underexplored - most chapters covered these international case studies with a quote and statistic before reverting back to the Canadian context. Perhaps dedicating a chapter to these international case studies, or at least providing more historical context for them, could have helped illustrate more fundamental causes of these issues at a global level. Second, it seemed like Talaga's narrative often bounced back-and-forth between proximate causes of Indigenous youth suicide (e.g. lack of access to emergency prevention services), more general inequalities in the health system, and historical/structural determinants (e.g. intergenerational trauma, lack of self-governance, etc.). While I found this helpful to draw connections between each of these "scales" of health determinants, I felt like many sections only examined each scale at a cursory level before moving onto the next scale.

That said, each chapter provided an additional layer of understanding to both the immediate and historical forces that have shaped unequal access to healthcare, and contributed to an epidemic of Indigenous youth suicide in particular. This is an important book for all Canadians (and indeed, all readers around the world who wish to better understand Indigenous experiences) and forces us to confront the root causes of the most shocking inequalities that persist today.

[Nadine Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a harrowing and heartbreaking read. But there is hope yet. Our First Nations population is resilient in spite of the horrors they have been subjected to. Activists are making headway but children continue to be vulnerable. Talaga, a thorough and thoughtful journalist, expounds on a topic that many Canadians do not want to acknowledge, that is our mistreatment, cruelty, violence and subjugation of our indigenous population which continues to this day. This is a powerful book. It should be taught in schools. And I hope Talaga's efforts will engender empathy and greater understanding.

[Tim Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should be required reading in Canadian high schools. Really informative text indigenous history around the world and especially the contemporary injustices that fuel inequality in Canadian society. It is a good primer but it could have been longer, I honestly wanted more.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a beguiling image of Canada, as a mosaic of ethnicities although recognising the long-standing Anglo-French tensions seen in the recurrent almost-taking-of-power by Quebequois nationalists or separatists that threatens the integrity of the Canadian state. It’s an image sustained by the story of the ‘nice’ Canadian (almost always told in comparison to the ‘ugly’ American) and shored up Canada’s carefully crafted image of the professional practitioners of human rights, acting for the UN and in other multi-lateral settings. It’s beguiling, it’s seductive and it wins a lot of plaudits.

Yet, underpinning this picture of the eternally-decent-in-the-world that is Canada lies a much bleaker story where the Canadian state doesn’t look so good; this is settler colonial Canada. This is the Canada built on the dispossession of Indigenous peoples – its First Nations, the Inuit in the north and the Métis. This is the Canada that has shunted those Indigenous people to its margins, maintains modified but unchanged in key respects 1867 legislation where the State decides who is counted as Indigenous, and until recently treated men and women differently in that classifying. This is the settler colonial state where Indigenous peoples were forced into residential schools and subjected to rampant human rights abuses, including extensive physical and sexual abuse; where children were and are disproportionately taken into care with what seems to be a lower threshold for ‘risk’ than non-Indigenous communities; where death rates for high school students are alarmingly high, poverty disproportionate, an estimated 1200-1300 women and girls are missing or dead with inadequate responses from the state, including police forces. This is, in short, a state with all the characteristics we recognise as settler colonial – with conditions of life for Indigenous peoples similar to others, such as Australia, New Zealand, Norway and the USA. These are the circumstances Tanya Talaga takes on in this distressing, as it should be, compelling exploration of colonised lives.

There is one sense in which this is a continuation of her impressive and important 2017 book Seven Fallen Feathers dealing with the unexplained deaths of Indigenous high school students in Thunder Bay, ON. As alarming as these deaths are, here she extends them out to begin her discussion in a spate of youth suicides in First Nations in northern Ontaria, focusing on seven young women between 12 and 15 who took their own lives in 2017. It is a sucker punch of an opening that leads to a wide-ranging discussion of colonisation, of mental health services in the context of health care as a whole, of dispossession, alienation and isolation (and only not by virtue of distance) of Indigenous peoples. While the discussion deals mainly with Canada, there are valuable and important comparative asides to situations in Norway, Australia and Brazil contextualising and generalising the Canadian cases.

She links community crises to the effects of residential schools, exploring the notion of generational trauma, seen in other settings also (there is compelling evidence from Australia of similar effects, and I witnessed something similar in conversations in Ainu communities in Hokkaido, Japan a couple of years ago), where entire generations of Indigenous community leaders are isolated from their communities and from their communities’ cultures, losing not only their place in the world but an ability to pass that place on subsequent generations. It’s not all bad news though, despite the depth of the crisis. Across the country, across the world, Indigenous communities are organising themselves to build their own support services, to pressure governments to recognise the depth of the need (and in some cases to meet those obligations: as I was reading this news was emerging that the Cherokee Nation has appointed a delegate to the US Congress, as promised by Treaty, and she is arguing that her first act will be to pressure that Congress to shift its support for health and education promised by that Treaty from a discretionary to mandatory funding stream, which may not seem significant but is about recognition of a legal obligation) and to take control over conditions from which they have been excluded. Talaga highlights some progress in these efforts, but is clear that States are moving slowly, often despite promises to act.

Talaga’s writing style, she is an accomplished and widely respected journalist, means that she is able to take us as readers into these difficult areas, bring home the depth of the crisis and continue to give us a way into the personal stories that lie behind the big pictures and statistics. It is not, however, the personal stories of the battered, the missing, the dead, the grief although they are all powerfully a presence throughout, but the stories of resistance, of organising, of the growing demands of Indigenous peoples for justice. There is an impressive discourse in Canada of reconciliation, but throughout we are reminded that reconciliation is of limited value if there is no justice.

This is an essential critique of the continuing costs of settler colonialism and the foundations of the settler colonial state, an important reminder of the moral imperatives of those states to act and of the limits imposed by their settler colonial basis on their ability and willingness to act and valuable insight to the struggles of Indigenous peoples for justice, in this case in the health sector, but more widely. Difficult, demanding and vital – and amid all that optimistic (not because of the State but because of the struggle).

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I've seen Tanya's name referenced in Canadian media before, this was first direct encounter with her work. This book offers a frank and necessary account of the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Indigenous communities around the world - chronicling both the similarities and differences in in the perpetuation of intergenerational trauma by governments.

While I was familiar with some of the ways in which the treaty rights of Indigenous folks in Canada have been violated, this book outlines the specifics in an extremely clear way. This is absolutely recommended reading.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential, and necessarily depressing and anger-inducing, reading.

[Adrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of Massey Lectures clearly outlines why the current suicide epidemic sweeping through First Nations communities throughout Canada is to be taken seriously. The lectures explain what has happened historically for matters to reach such tragic proportions and clearly show what needs to be done in the future. She also unpacks the meaning of trauma and how it manifests itself in the current indigenous population. This thereby illustrates that its effects are pervasive and can reach down through the generations. A strong point within Tanya Talaga's writing is that she addresses not only the needs and circumstances from a Canadian perspective but also looks abroad and gives us some insight to the troubles faced by Australia's indigenous populations, Sweden's Sami population and the Guarani Indians in the Amazon in Brazil. Through this broader perspective she is able to demonstrate that it is not only an issue for Canadians but for the world and that, if everyone is truly equal as is stated in so many modern constitutions, political and judicial systems have a lot of ground to cover in making good on too many promises that have been broken in the past and continue to be broken in the present.

[Heike Lettrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was difficult to read. Heartbreaking, shocking, and stirred up a lot of tough feelings in me. I had no idea youth suicides were so extensive among Indigenous communities in Canada and across the world, but it makes sense that it's a tangible expression of intergenerational trauma that comes from having your culture torn away from you, and having only fragments and shards left around you.

But this book also gave me a reminder that I can make a difference in my own little sphere, work towards a better world, built on a foundation of understanding the settler history of which I am a part, where we have tangible results that help support those around us, especially those to whom so much harm has been done.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many great takeaways. The more you know, the more you know. A thought near the book’s end: the world is so much bigger and so much smaller than we realize. There is such a big picture here and yet it’s all interconnected, the pain and suffering. I definitely feel the pull Talaga mentions in her last chapter, the juxtaposition between the progress and regression Indigenous People’s experience today. In my own community I see stagnancy and I fear for the future of these children; I see the cycle continuing right before my eyes. In others, I see leaps and bounds of success and I feel a tug of hope for the generations of now and those to come.

[Lubna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook read by the author. 3.5 stars. I wanted more from this book, I guess. Maybe because I’ve been reading a lot of books by indigenous North American authors that some of the information in this book was a bit repetitive. The information I found most useful and wanted to learn more about is how and why are suicide rates so high among indigenous peoples all over the world, especially the young, and what’s being done about that. For me this book was more of an introduction to the issue, providing more questions than answers. Still, I think it’s an important book for everyone to gain awareness about these issues.

[Arianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give more stars to this book, I would definitely do. Tanya Talaga describes in a detailed empathetic way, the structural neglect and violence that is suffered by Indigenous Communities around the world, specially in Canada. It was a painful but incredibly eye-opening experience.
"But don't say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You've heard it now" Thomas King

[Shirley Jodouin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was really heart wrenching, sad, maddening, eye opening and informative. The atrocities that the Indigenous people have been subjected to…and continue even today. It was extremely difficult to read the treatment of these People without tears streaming down my face. I realize how ignorant I was to this. There’s so much I could say but I urge you who is reading this, to take the time and read this book.

[Theresa Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

My thirteen year old son asked me not all that long ago why his Indigenous friends kept having to go to so many funerals. My son is not a fool. He knows ‘why’ they keep having to go: because Indigenous youth in our region, predominantly young men, are dying from suicide. His ‘why’ ran deeper than that. It’s not the sort of question I ever envisaged having to attempt to answer as a parent. More importantly, it’s not the sort of question a young teenager should feel compelled to ask. And for his friends? Therein lies the real tragedy, as they regularly get dressed in their white shirts and black pants to attend the funerals of their peers, young adults who have died far too young.

‘In Indigenous communities, the lasting impact of colonial history has directly resulted in a severing of the crucial spiritual, emotional, and physical tethers to the past. The historical separation of Indigenous people from their land, the separation of children from their parents, the separation from their traditional culture and ways of living – all of these things have contributed to a spiritual emptiness that has resulted in generations of children’s deaths.’
~~~
‘These Indigenous peoples were largely jobless and lived in impoverished conditions in cities and small country towns; they fell into patterns of addiction and had poor health and lower life expectancies than the general population; they suffered from intense discrimination, both societal and systematic; and they became overrepresented in the prison system. Children routinely grew up with no sense of belonging, no sense of themselves or where they came from, so they begin to do something that was largely unheard of before: they began to kill themselves. And so did their children and their grandchildren.’
~~~
‘Today’s Aboriginal youth are often born into a world characterised by normative instability, to parents who may have substance abuse issues, who live in extreme poverty or, because of their own disruptive upbringings, lack the tools necessary to raise children. They are born into social exclusion, so they are not only at risk of suicide, they also face higher rates of sexual abuse and of self-destructive behaviours such as petrol sniffing and other forms of substance abuse.’

This book is comprehensively researched and meticulously informed. While predominantly about Canada, the author’s home country, it also examines the impact of colonisation on the following Indigenous peoples:

Guarani in Brazil
Sami in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia
Inuit in the Northern territories in Canada
First Nations, Metis in Canada
Native Americans in the United States
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia

Not so much about comparison, but rather this examination of more than one society provides context for the crisis and highlights the similarities, which are, to be frank, disturbingly apparent. Honestly, this is likely the most impactful book I’ve read in recent years. In no way does it indulge in its trauma, but it is written with a clear adhesion to the facts, which overall, speak for themselves.
Overwhelmingly, history does not tell a pretty story, in any of these countries, when it comes to the human rights of Indigenous peoples. Contemporarily, we still have a lot of ground to cover before the gap that needs closing is no longer a chasm. All Our Relations is an excellent book that explains with conviction why colonisation still matters; why, generations on, its cataclysmic effect still impacts with force. I highly recommend this book to everyone as essential reading.

Thanks is extended to Scribe for providing me with a copy of All Our Relations for review.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

At this point, if you're Canadian--unless you're living under a rock--you'll be familiar with some of the issues Talaga brings up. You've probably heard a lot of conversation about residential school abuses, generational trauma, the '60s scoop, the Indian Act, treaty rights, over-representation of Indigenous people in Canada's jails and, hovering over all of it, this far away thing called reconciliation.

Some of the events you'll recognize because you saw them in the news in the last decade--protests and legal challenges, etc.

If you've done deeper reading from Talaga or other authors like her, you'll know a little bit more about unequal access to education, health care and other services. You might recognize the historical abuses she talks about, like the rage-inducing policies involving the Inuit and TB.

But this isn't just about Canada.

Instead, Talaga tracks the common themes--the land grabs, the cultural extermination, exploitation, lack of services, the dark history of removing children from their families and, most heartbreakingly, high rates of suicide--that can be found in Indigenous populations around the world.

I think the biggest thing that strikes you is just how similar the stories are. The peoples' names change, the titles of institutions change, but its all the same colonial mentality taking plays out of the same playbook.

It's not a light read by any means, but it is a worthy read.

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once I passed the halfway point in this book, I could not put it down. The research in this book is fantastic. Talaga explains the need to deconstruct the state for Indigenous resurgence and carefully lays out foundations for it. By telling stories of mostly children and women, she showcases that by uplifting the most vulnerable we will be able to create a better world. Talaga also calls on allies of Indigenous peoples to speak out against injustices when they occur and to demand more from our governments.

This book was fantastic. I loved it a lot. I found it a little less focused in the first half but the conclusions were simply amazing. It should definitely be widely read.

[Rachel Mantas · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an important read for all people across the world. I hope more and more people pick up this book. It cover's Pre-Canada History and other areas in the world that were previously more populated by Indigenous Peoples. It was terrible to hear the previous populations of these areas was 10-100x higher than what is left surviving today. I hope to continue reading Tanya's excellent books, stocking them in my store, along with moving from reconciliation to rights, as she states in her book.

[Rebecca Meyrink · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read as a Canadian. I learned a lot of history that I didn’t learn growing up. It also gave so much context through global history. This is a challenging read because of the subject matter but I’m very happy I read it.

[Taysway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required reading for everyone!

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read about the status of Indigenous populations, with emphasis on suicide rates and the reasons thereof. Talaga's work is accessible and a must read.

[Rebecca I]

Truly eye-opening.

[Jennifer Outschoorn-Bacon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book holds too much importance. It 100% should be an essential read.

[Sassy Mystic Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read if you want to learn more about the impacts of colonization on indigenous peoples around the world. The book is informative and provides insight in a non blaming finger pointing fashion. If you want to learn facts this is the book to read to get some understanding about what the world’s indigenous populations are recovering from. Highly recommend.

[Danya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took me a long time to finish because of the amount of heartbreak - "it is not up to the government to determine who is Indigenous and who is not. Belonging is not theirs to give." ✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽

[Rai Beattie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much from this! It was a challenging read but I think a really important one.