As Canadians prepare to celebrate Canada Day, many indigenous Canadians, whose ancestors have been here for centuries, reflect upon the negative impacts of colonization during the past 150 years.
Join us at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 28 at the K’omoks Band Hall for a free film screening of Birth of a Family about the infamous“ Sixties Scoop” of indigenous children.
Three sisters and a brother, adopted as infants into separate families across North America, meet together for the first time in this deeply moving documentary. Removed from their young Dene mother’s care as part of Canada’s Sixties Scoop, Betty Ann, Esther, Rosalie and Ben were four of the 20,000 indigenous children taken from their families between 1955 and 1985, to be either adopted into white families or to live in foster care.
As the four siblings piece together their shared history, their connection deepens, bringing laughter with it, and their family begins to take shape. Tragically, for a myriad of reasons, these reunions don’t always go as well as the one shared in the film.
Filmmaker Tasha Hubbard, also scooped in the 1960s, talks about witnessing the siblings as they hugged one another when they first met at the Calgary airport.
“It was a victory, a thumbing of the nose to the Canadian and provincial governments that decided to extend the residential school system to a more pervasive policy of permanently removing children from their families, which intended that children would never go home, never know their indigenous history, culture, and language…”
World Community is pleased to join with the Immigrant Welcome Society and the Comox Valley Transition Society to co-sponsor this free informative event.
A panel discussion will follow the film. Everyone is welcome to attend. See the film trailer at worldcommunity.ca
FMI: (250) 897-0511