Why we should watch “Birth of A Family”

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While many of us have heard of the “Sixties Scoop” (the policy from 1955 to 1985 of removing some 20,000 Indigenous children from their families and placing them in foster care for adoption by white families), few have a sense of what it means in human terms.

Imagine being in your fifties and discovering that you have not one, not two, but three siblings whom you have never met before. The film Birth of a Family shows Ben, Betty Anne, Rosalie, and Esther meeting as a group for the first time, putting a real human face on how much was lost by this policy.

Why We Should Watch Birth of a Family

Each taken from their Dene mother, their interactions demonstrate how families offer us acceptance and warmth. With gentle pacing and unstaged, normal interactions - amid something that’s just not normal - the film is very intimate. Yet, it doesn’t romanticize the pain of confronting the loss and the profound effort of uniting.

One sibling shares how people have said that she’s better off for having been adopted, that there was some good that came of it. She says she just feels ripped off. Perhaps thinking they were better off protects settlers from feeling shame at the violence of what was done. It is the epitome of white supremacy thinking to say that children were better off in a white home, robbed of their Indigenous families and identities. realize that collectively they’ve missed 212 birthdays together - so they try to put as many candles on a cake as they can to celebrate!

We hope for another film, to show how their connection developed. The one week spent together in this documentary was just the beginning of their coming together to try to be a family.

This film helps us get to the root of what was lost that they cannot get back. One striking image that brings this home is when they The Warmland Book & Film Collective – begun in 2018 as a response to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada – explores, celebrates, and learns from Indigenous authors and filmmakers. We are welcoming new members – if you enjoy friendly, spirited, and interesting conversation, email us at WarmlandBFC@gmail.com for the zoom link. We next meet online Nov 9th to discuss God is Red: A Native View of Religion by Vine Deloria Jr.

Submitted by David & Ranji, on behalf of the WBFC