Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City

Content Warning: In this section, Talaga describes child abuse, sexual and gender-based violence, drug and alcohol use, and death by suicide. Additionally, to highlight racism and apathy toward Indigenous communities, she reproduces offensive terms that non-Indigenous Canadians often use to describe Indigenous peoples.

Talaga opens this chapter by introducing Maryanne Panacheese, who lives on the Mishkeegogamang First Nation (Mish) reservation. Like residents of many reservations, Mish residents battle the impacts of long-term poverty, substandard housing, limited access to clean water, intergenerational trauma, and systemic racism. Maryanne was a residential school survivor. She’s Ojibwe, yet the government sent her and several siblings to a residential school dominated by Akwesasne children, which is a different cultural group. Her older sister, Sarah, was taken away by police after being accused of participating in break-ins and sent to another school. Maryanne never saw her sister again. Sarah might have been murdered by a notorious Canadian serial killer. Police still don’t know what happened to Sarah.

In addition to losing Sarah, Maryanne lost her son, Paul, who is the third of the seven fallen feathers. Paul transferred to Dennis Franklin because his local high school was severely underfunded and only went up to 10th grade.