Investigative journalist Tanya Talaga is trying to piece together a family mystery that dates back 150 years: who was her great-great-grandmother, Annie Carpenter, and how did she become so lost?

Adapted from Talaga's book of the same name, The Knowing is a four-part docuseries that tells a story of survival and love — one shared by every single Indigenous family in Canada. The series is co-directed by Courtney Montour and Talaga, and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024.

Talaga and Montour sat down together to discuss the real-time journey of making the series and uncovering lost family members, while telling the wider stories of reconciliation and the generational effects of colonization.

Courtney Montour: You put your own family story out there in The Knowing. What got you to that point to want to do that in the series?

Tanya Talaga: It felt disingenuous to do anything else. When I was writing the book, it took an absolutely different turn from the outline that I had intended to write on. I was going to write a book on the children that were missing, those that didn't come home from Indian residential schools — volume four of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report.

When I started to write The Knowing, I realized that we [all have] our own knowing — that we have had for such a long time — about the people in our families that just didn't come home. My Uncle Hank had been, for decades, searching for his mother's story and his grandmother's story.

That became a driving thrust of the book, and then it drove the film, because I realized that it was all the same story. Annie also represents all of the children that didn't come back from Indian hospitals, from Indian residential schools or from tuberculosis sanatoria.

You know, you go on one track as a filmmaker, as a writer, and then suddenly the story comes barreling through the centre. You can't stop it.

How did you feel about being part of The Knowing?

CM: What it felt like was a huge responsibility. These stories are so sacred.

I feel like this series is honouring these voices. It's led by our communities, and even though we're talking about residential school and family members not coming home from all of these different places, everyone shared in the way that they wanted to share.

I think that's the really special thing about this series: that everyone is doing it in their own way and no one is being held in a position where their trauma defines them — or where they have to share that.

There's other ways for us to heal and for the rest of Canada to understand what has happened. And I think that you have honoured those stories in that way in the series.

TT: You read The Knowing before anyone else did. You had the very first chapters and drafts, along with our film editors. That was hard [laughs]. Do you remember? It took me a long time before I gave you them, because I was just terrified. I remember I kept saying to you, "I don't think it's ready. I think I'm going to do this to it and that to it…"

Then, when I gave it to you, all of you, I had no idea what you were going to say. And you were all so supportive. That was huge.

CM: One of the many things that spoke to me in the book is the poetic writing, and that was something that we were able to incorporate, and it grounds the series.

Having Elder Stella speaking it in Ininiw brings a whole level of connection to past and present, and what matters to our community and the people that we are.

TT: It adds something totally different to the film. I was floored by it when I first saw the lay-down of her voice over the images. It became really clear to me how important language is.

We [also] brought other language speakers down: Simon Bird, Martha Sutherland and her husband Brian Nakogee and a team from Fort Albany. These Elders, Survivors, came to Toronto and voiced the entire series in Ininiw.

That's so important because when we talk about handing down our stories — making sure the language is out there and it's going to be preserved — their voices are going to be preserved.

CM: It's preserving our stories for a future generation to see our communities, to see our land, to hear those stories from these individuals because that knowledge will eventually pass on.

It also makes me think about the way that we decided to interweave photos and 16-millimetre archival footage in the series. It was so important to honour the stories of each residential school and to not use stock imagery or photos that we couldn't identify to speak about the story as a whole.

The whole team put in so much effort to find the images from each school, hospital, location that we are talking about, so that we see those images, we see those children that were in those institutions.

CM The series is just being released, but you're already going out in the community [for impact screenings]. What is happening with all of that?

TT: The very first stop we went to was Lac Seul First Nation because there was the Bringing Our Children Home Initiative, which is tied to the Survivors at Lac Seul, which is outside of Sioux Lookout.

We filmed quite a bit at Sioux Lookout. [There], I was introduced to Roy Carpenter, who was one of Annie's relations. He's alive, he's living and breathing, he's flesh and blood; he is not a record. I was stunned because I didn't know if there were any Carpenters left at Sioux Lookout.

Roy told me that we're from the Albany River. We're all from Fort Albany…. I think my head was exploding when we were shooting that. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, why didn't I just come here first? I can't believe I didn't know you before! I've spent three years writing this book and researching, and you knew the whole story!"

So going back to Lac Seul [for the screening] and knowing that I had all these relations there was super cool because Annie lived there for quite some time and her mom was Jane Bunting, and the Buntings are all still at Lac Seul.

There were two tables full of people I was related to, and instead of watching just the first two episodes, we ended up watching all four. We were there for six hours! And we had this giant feast. I will carry that night forever with me.

CM: Being out there in the field with you in these various places like Lac Seul and Fort Albany, and seeing your eyes light up when you got to meet family and community, and [hearing them say] the same thing back to you and sharing those stories … it's no longer paper and documents. This is real. That community is real. Those connections are real. And the government tried to stop it.

TT: It didn't work. It's so true. You know, we wouldn't be at this point too — I wouldn't be — if it wasn't for community, if it wasn't for Paula Rickard. I reached out on Facebook to the James Bay community FYI page, just randomly saying, "Does anybody know some Carpenters?" And I got a note back from Paula, who turns out to be my cousin, and she knew all of these names — 13,000 names. And she knew all about the Carpenters and helped me look for more. That's the value of the community.

CM: This whole process was about constantly checking in with the community all along the way, and we continued that collaboration in the edit suite too, where we all worked together as a team. That was what was really, really lovely … it wasn't just one director and one editor — everybody was in there giving their feedback.

[Being] open to sharing ideas is so important and is the path forward, I think, for filmmaking. This really shouldn't be an individual thing, and it should always be a community and a sharing of ideas.

TT: Miigwetch for that. I appreciate that.

The Knowing premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024.

Watch now on CBC Gem and the CBC Docs YouTube channel.