Julian Brave NoiseCat’s childhood was rich with culture and contradictions. When his Secwépemc and St’at’imc father, an artist haunted by a turbulent past, abandoned the family, he and his non-Native mother were embraced by the urban Native community in Oakland, California, as well as by family on the Canim Lake Indian Reserve in British Columbia. In his father’s absence, NoiseCat immersed himself in Native history and culture to understand the man he seldom saw—his past, his story, where he came from—and, by extension, himself.

Drawing from five years of on-the-ground reporting, We Survived the Night paints a profound and unforgettable portrait of contemporary Indigenous life, alongside an intimate and deeply powerful reckoning between a father and a son.

Join us for the Canadian launch of We Survived the Night, the debut book from writer, journalist, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, champion powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history Julian Brave NoiseCat, published by Penguin Random House Canada. NoiseCat will open his box of treasures, sharing the stories and memories that shape his work. He will then sit down with award-winning journalist, author, and filmmaker Tanya Talaga for a rare and powerful conversation—an evening of storytelling, reflection, and connection.

Through this dialogue, two of the most influential Indigenous voices in contemporary storytelling will explore the intersections of memory, identity, and truth-telling — and how these threads shape both personal narrative and community understanding.

A reception will follow the program. 

Books will be available for purchase on site.

Tickets: $10. Community tickets (no charge) will be available for students, Indigenous community members, and CJF Journalism Fellows (with identification). 

About the Speakers

Julian Brave NoiseCat

Tanya Talaga

Award-Winning Journalist & Author | Seven Fallen Feathers, The Knowing

Tanya Talaga is an award-winning Anishinaabe journalist and author. Through her bestselling books, acclaimed documentaries, podcasts and powerful keynotes, Talaga aims to amplify Indigenous voices and stories across Canada and the world. Talaga is a born storyteller, who is passionate about education reform and a more inclusive and equitable future.

Talaga is of Anishinaabe and Polish descent. She is a proud member of Fort William First Nation, in the Robinson-Superior Treaty territory and her maternal family has ties to Treaty 9. Her father was Polish-Canadian.

For more than 20 years, Talaga was a journalist at the Toronto Star and is now a regular columnist at the Globe and Mail. In 2021, she was part of the Globe team that won the Michener Award in public service journalism for reporting on the Catholic Church’s efforts to avoid responsibility regarding Indian Residential Schools, and the pursuit of an apology from Pope Francis. She has been part of teams that won two National Newspaper Awards for Project of the Year while at The Star.

Talaga is the author of three national bestsellers. Her first book, Seven Fallen Feathers, won the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and the First Nation Communities Read Award: Young Adult/Adult. Her second book, All Our Relations: Finding a Path Forward, was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize and for the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. Her third book, The Knowing, 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. The Knowing is a seminal unravelling of the centuries-long oppression of Indigenous People that continues to reverberate in these communities today. It is the focus of a four-part, CBC docuseries that Tanya co-directed and co-wrote, which was awarded the 2024 Playback’s Directors of the Year and Best Writers at the 2025 Canadian Screen Awards.

Talaga is the founder of Makwa Creative Inc. a production company formed to elevate Indigenous voices and stories through podcasts and documentary films, including the Canadian Screen Award nominated War For The Woods, and Mashkawi-Manidoo Bimaadiziwin Spirit to Soar that received the ”Audience Award” for best mid-length documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival. She is also the executive producer of the podcast, Auntie Up! made for Indigenous women by Indigenous women.

Talaga holds five 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.