Toronto Star reporter Tanya Talaga has won the $25,000 RBC Taylor Prize for a book about the struggles of Indigenous people in Thunder Bay and the toll it is taking on young lives.

The book, Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City (House of Anansi Press), was spawned by a reporting assignment that sent Talaga to the northwestern Ontario city in 2011.

“I was supposed to write an article on why Indigenous people don’t vote in elections,” Talaga recalled.

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“When I sat down with Stan Beardy, who was then Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, he looked at me and asked, ‘Why aren’t you writing a story about Jordan Wabasse?’ I didn’t know who Jordan was. He said, ‘Jordan has been missing for 70 days.’”

Talaga said she was shocked and horrified to learned that seven Indigenous youth had died under tragic circumstances in Thunder Bay since 2000.

“When he (Beardy) said seven, I could not just believe it. It felt like this (book) is something I had to do,” said Talaga, noting her mother’s family are members of the Fort William First Nation.

The book, which delves into the lives and death of the teens, was also a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

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Talaga said two recent cases — the acquittals of Raymond Cormier in the 2014 death of Tina Fontaine in Winnipeg and that of a Saskatchewan farmer in the death of Colten Boushie — have shown much needs to be done to improve the lives of aboriginal Canadians.

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“Sometimes it feels like we’re going two steps forward and 10 steps backwards. Just as we think that people are talking and that politicians are going to do something in this country, then those things happen and we’re reminded how far we really have to go,” Talaga said.

Talaga noted 10 per cent of the sales of her book go to the Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, the secondary school that six of the seven youth attended before their deaths, and that she’ll make an additional donation from the prize money.

Talaga also thanked the Star for its support while researching and writing the book.

“I don’t think I could have written this book without the Star’s support. They were very supportive,” she said.

Read more: Seven Fallen Feathers excerpt: The death of Kyle Morrisseau

The other books shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize were James Maskalyk’s Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine (Doubleday Canada), Max Wallace’s In the Name of Humanity (Allen Lane Canada), Daniel Coleman’s Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place (Wolsak and Wynn), and Stephen R. Bown’s Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on Bering’s Great Voyage to Alaska (Douglas & McIntyre). Each of the finalists, including the winner, receives $5,000.

The three-member panel of jurors read 153 books submitted by 110 Canadian and international publishers for this year’s prize.

“There is a self-assurance about Canada which is being expressed not only in writers’ willingness to explore the world around us but also in their willingness to pursue today’s necessary stories. These endeavours help propel us into making informed and confident choices about our future. It is these accomplishments that the RBC Taylor Prize celebrates with Seven Fallen Feathers,” said prize founder Noreen Taylor in a statement.

With files from the Canadian Press