• Tanya Talaga is an award-winning journalist. She won a National Newspaper Award as part of a year-long team project on the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh and also was a part of the team nominated for a National Newspaper Award for their series of stories on murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.
• Tanya was the first journalist to cover the story of the seven missing Aboriginal kids in Thunder Bay.
• Gord Downie has done a multimedia project on Charlie Wenjack, whose death in the 60s foreshadowed the loss of the seven. Wenjack died from exposure after running away from residential school. He was twelve years old.
• Joseph Boyden's next novel, Wenjack, coming out October 2016, is about Charlie Wenjack
• Charlie Wenjack's sister, Pearl, is a huge supporter of this book and of Tanya Talaga.
• Recently, indigenous issues have received huge national attention, from the missing seven, to the murdered and missing indigenous women and girls, to Idle No More, to the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
• In addition, indigenous issues have come to the fore in the U.S. media, with the 2016 Native American protest against the Dakota Access oil pipeline.