Birth of a Family

Over three decades, an estimated 20,000 Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous families in Canada and abroad. Known as the Sixties Scoop, the removals blocked a generation from their traditional knowledge, territory and, most importantly, family. With respect and empathy for her subjects, drawn from past personal experience, director Tasha Hubbard bears witness to the story of four siblings, who in middle age come together for the first time to build the bonds they were denied. Betty Ann Adam sought out sisters Rosalie and Ester and brother Ben, each taken as infants from Mary Jane Adam, a Dene single mother from Saskatchewan. During a week in Banff, the siblings explore a shared identity, piecing together a fragmented history. Quiet moments reveal profound emotion, with the understanding that their experience is shared by many others who have neither been heard nor acknowledged, and time is running out. (Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival)