| Birth of a Family | |
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| Directed by | Tasha Hubbard |
| Written by | Tasha Hubbard, Betty Ann Adam |
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Birth of a Family is a 2017 First Nations Canadian documentary directed by Tasha Hubbard [1] and co-written by Hubbard and Betty Ann Adam. It follows three sisters and a brother, adopted as infants into separate families across North America, who meet together for the first time. [2]
The reunion emerged from decades of searching by Betty Ann Adam, the eldest of the family. [3] Removed from their young Dene mother's care as part of Canada's infamous 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. The documentary follows the siblings as they reunite in Banff, Alberta. As the four siblings piece together their shared history, their connection deepens, bringing laughter with it, and their family begins to take shape. [4]
In 2014, Betty Ann Adam, a reporter at The StarPhoenix , approached Hubbard about documenting her planned reunion and her intentions to direct the project.
Hubbard pitched the idea to the National Film Board (NFB) and the response was immediately supportive. However, the NFB made it a condition that Hubbard be director. Adam agreed in order to be more emotionally and physically present for the upcoming reunion. In an article for The StarPhoenix, she emphasised the importance of having a director who had a similar lived experience of forced removal and adoption into a non-Indigenous family during the Sixties Scoop. [5] Adam said, "It was perfect to have a director who had that same experience in her lived experience. We knew that would inform her approach toward the story, that she would understand certain things about what we were going through." This responsibility for holding space and minimal interference was central to the filming.
Despite the circumstances of the reunion taking place in a small cabin and it being a two-camera shoot, Adam says Hubbard was able to shoot the film without distracting the family from the connections they were there to make. "For us, things probably went as smoothly as they could. I think that's because she was taking care of things behind the scenes so they didn't interfere with our experience," Adam says. [5]
Reception of the documentary has been positive. It has featured in many festivals including the 2017 Talking Stick Festival, [6] Edmonton International Film Festival, [7] and the Toronto International Film Festival. [4]
Patrick Mullen of Point of View reviews the film as "relevatory" and "a family reunion doc like you've never seen." [8] Gateway Online calls this film a "triumph," writing in their review, "Birth of a Family reminds viewers of a painful past that many First Nations peoples had and continue to trudge through." [9] Canada's documentary films festival described the film as a "raw emotion, a heart-wrenching combination of pain and joy, shown by the siblings throughout the film is as moving as anything I have seen on film. Their willingness to lay bare their experiences and feelings is inspiring, and while their story is devastating to watch it acts as a reminder of the resilience of the First Nations people who, against all odds and despite every effort to destroy them, continue to persevere." [10]
| Award body | Date | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edmonton International Film Festival | October 15, 2017 | Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature | Won | [11] |
| imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival | October 22, 2017 | Special Jury Prize – Moon Jury | Won | [12] |
The National Film Board of Canada is a Canadian public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries.
Alanis Obomsawin, is an Abenaki American-Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist, and activist primarily known for her documentary films. Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues. Obomsawin is a member of Film Fatales independent women filmmakers.
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The Sixties Scoop, also known as The Scoop, was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.
Stories We Tell is a 2012 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Sarah Polley and produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The film explores her family's secrets—including one intimately related to Polley's own identity. Stories We Tell premiered August 29, 2012 at the 69th Venice International Film Festival, then played at the 39th Telluride Film Festival and the 37th Toronto International Film Festival. In 2015, it was added to the Toronto International Film Festival's list of the top 10 Canadian films of all time, at number 10. It was also named the 70th greatest film since 2000 in a 2016 critics' poll by BBC.
David Christensen is an Alberta film director and producer who since October 2007 has been an executive producer with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) at its Northwest Centre, based in Edmonton.
Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child is a 1986 National Film Board of Canada documentary film by Alanis Obomsawin, about the suicide of Métis youth Richard Stanley Cardinal, who killed himself in 1984 at the age of 17. Cardinal, who had been placed in 28 different homes during his 14 years in Alberta's child welfare system, hanged himself from a cross bar he had nailed between two trees near his last foster home, northwest of Edmonton.
Richard John Feehan is a Canadian politician who was elected in the 2015 Alberta general election to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta representing the electoral district of Edmonton-Rutherford. He was made Alberta NDP caucus chair on June 3 and elected deputy chairman of committees on June 12, 2015.
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Tasha Hubbard is a Canadian First Nations/Cree filmmaker and educator based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Hubbard's credits include three National Film Board of Canada documentaries exploring Indigenous rights in Canada: Two Worlds Colliding, a 2004 Canada Award-winning short film about the Saskatoon freezing deaths, Birth of a Family, a 2017 feature-length documentary about four siblings separated during Canada's Sixties Scoop, and nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, a 2019 Hot Docs and DOXA Documentary award-winning documentary which examines the death of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man, and the subsequent trial and acquittal of the man who shot him.
nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Tasha Hubbard and released in 2019. The film centres on the 2016 death of Colten Boushie, and depicts his family's struggle to attain justice after the controversial acquittal of Boushie's killer. Narrated by Hubbard, the film also includes a number of animated segments which contextualize the broader history of indigenous peoples of Canada.
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