A seminal unravelling of the centuries-long oppression of Indigenous People in 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 lay hidden by shame and abandonment.
The Knowing is the unfolding of Canadian history unlike anything we have ever read before. Award-winning and bestselling Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga retells the history of this country as only she can—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.
Deeply personal and meticulously researched, The Knowing is a seminal unravelling of the centuries-long oppression of Indigenous People that continues to reverberate in these communities today.
Pre-Order Your Copy Now
On sale August 27, 2024
See Tanya This Fall
September 3 (TBC)
Fort William First Nation ON
More details to come
September 4, 2pm ET
Thunder Bay ON
Magnus Theatre
September 8, 12pm ET
Eden Mills ON
Eden Mills Writers Festival
September 12, 6:15pm ET
Toronto ON
Toronto International Film Festival Screening, TIFF Lightbox
(No book signing)
September 13, 8pm ET
Toronto ON
Toronto International Film Festival Screening, Scotiabank Theatre Toronto
(No book signing)
September 23, 7pm ET
Toronto ON
Ramsay Talks, Koerner Hall
September 25, 7pm ET
Toronto ON
Tawich in the City, Koerner Hall
(Guest Appearance)
September 27, 7:30pm ET
Kingston ON
Kingston Writers Festival
September 29, 11am ET
Prince Edward County ON
County Adaptation Film Festival
September 30
Ottawa ON
Ottawa Writers Festival &
Library Archives Canada
October 10, 7pm ET
Hamilton ON
Hamilton Playhouse Theatre
October 16, 7:30pm ET
Sault Ste. Marie ON
Algoma Fall Festival
October 18
Edmonton AB
Edmonton Writers Festival
October 20
Calgary AB
Calgary Wordfest
October 21, 7:30pm PT
Vancouver BC
Vancouver Writers Festival
October 24, 5:30pm PT
Vancouver BC
Vancouver Writers Festival
October 25, 7:30pm ET
Vancouver BC
Vancouver Writers Festival
October 27 (TBC)
Victoria BC
More details to come
Oct/Nov (TBC)
Winnipeg MB
More details to come
Oct/Nov (TBC)
Saskatoon SK
More details to come
November 1, 7pm ET
Waterloo ON
Wild Writers Festival
November 6, 7pm ET
Orangeville ON
Authors on Stage
November 7 (TBC)
Charlottetown PE
More details to come
November 8, 6:30pm AT
Halifax NS
Afterwords Literary Festival
November 8, 1pm AT
Halifax NS
Afterwords Literary Festival
November 10, 1pm AT
Halifax NS
Afterwords Literary Festival
November 11 (TBC)
Charlottetown PE
More details to come
November 26, 7pm PT
Whitehorse YK
Active Voices Series,
Yukon Arts Centre
December 5, 7pm ET
Toronto ON
Toronto Public Library,
North York Central Library Branch
Check back often as we confirm all the details!
WORLD PREMIERE
Watch The Knowing documentary at TIFF
The companion documentary series will make its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12
Co-directors Talaga and Kanien’kehá:ka filmmaker Courtney Montour (Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again) use archival footage and intimate interviews to piece together the unknown story of Talaga’s family member, Annie Carpenter.
This beautiful and touching documentary puts names and faces to an 80-year-old mystery and, in doing so, takes us on an emotional journey of familial reclamation and an exploration of Canada’s true history.
The Knowing four-part series coming this Fall
The full four-part series The Knowing, expanding Talaga's story, will premiere September 25 on CBC and CBC Gem
The Knowing is a four-part series that follows journalist Tanya Talaga and her family's eight-decade-long search for family matriarch Annie Carpenter. Adapted from Talaga's book of the same name and premiering in full at TIFF, The Knowing is one story of survival, love and of outlasting.
A Cree-language version of the documentary series, narrated by James Bay Cree Community members, will be available later in CBC’s 2024-2025 broadcast season.
TANYA TALAGA is of Anishinaabe and Polish descent and was born and raised in Toronto. She is a member of Fort William First Nation. Her mother was raised on the traditional territory of Fort William First Nation and Treaty 9. 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. A finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, the novel was also CBC’s Nonfiction Book of the Year and a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. Talaga was the 2017–2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy and the 2018 CBC Massey Lecturer. She is also the author of the national bestseller All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward. For more than twenty years she was a journalist at the Toronto Star and is now a regular columnist at the Globe and Mail. Tanya Talaga is the founder of Makwa Creative, a production company formed to elevate Indigenous voices and stories.