Iceland Writers Retreat

Canada and the world. She is a storyteller, who is passionate about education reform and a more inclusive and equitable future.

Tanya Talaga is the author of three bestsellers: Seven Fallen Feathers, All Our Relations, and The Knowing, which is the focus of an award-winning CBC documentary series that she co-wrote and directed. She is the founder of Makwa Creative, a production company formed to elevate Indigenous voices through documentary films.

For more than 20 years, Tanya was a journalist at the Toronto Star and is now a regular, freelance columnist at The Globe and Mail. She is the author of three national bestsellers: Seven Fallen Feathers, All Our Relations and The Knowing; which retells Canadian history through an Indigenous lens through the life of the women in her maternal family. The Knowing is the focus of a four-part, CBC documentary series that she co-wrote and co-directed. It premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and won the 2025 Canadian Screen Award for Best Writing-Documentary.

Makwa Creative produced the Canadian Screen Award-nominated War for the Woods, and podcasts such as Auntie Up! In 2025, the documentary Ni-Naadamaadiz: Red Power Rising, which she produced and co-wrote with Métis director Shane Belcourt, premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. She is currently directing and producing Radioactive Roadtrip, a digital web series on nuclear waste.

Tanya holds six honorary doctorates. She was the 2017/2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy, and in 2018, was the first Anishinaabe woman to be the CBC Massey Lecturer. Talaga is the recipient of the 2025 Canadian Journalism Federation Tribute which recognizes media luminaries who have made an exceptional journalistic impact on the international stage. She was also given the 2025 Rosemary Brown and Neil Reimer Awards, both for her journalism, stories and leadership in the advancement of equality and social justice impact.