As an Indigenous filmmaker, I have made films about Indigenous experience for two decades and I’m noticing that audiences are growing and becoming more aware of our histories and issues. What is less familiar to audiences is the 60s scoop. After the residential schools started to close (although not fully until the 1990s), Canadian policies were adapted into a new child removal system. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children were apprehended. Reasons varied. Families needed support in grappling with the legacies of residential school, but rather than assistance for the parents, the children were taken away and ties were severed. People remember the social worker sedans coming onto the reserve and taking children who were walking down the road. Just being a single parent was enough justification for the apprehensions. Children were then processed in various ways and sent to willing adoptive and foster parents, usually without any oversight. Most were adopted into Canadian families, but some ended up in the U.S. and abroad. Survivors remember forced labour, abuse, neglect and loneliness. Even those who ended up in “good homes” grapple with the loss of community and culture.

The complexity of the impacts is still not understood, sometimes even in Indigenous communities. Some 60s Scoop survivors completely shut down and never try to come back; others try to reconnect and then retreat; and some are able to find a connection and a sense of identity. All are fearful of being rejected by the families and communities that were never given a chance to hold onto these children. Sadly, the suicide and incarceration rates are high for survivors, most of whom had no support and experienced some form of trauma.

I was adopted out in the tail end of the 60s Scoop and was one of the last children to go through the Adopt Indian and Metis program in Saskatchewan. I used this experience to anchor my telling of the four siblings in the documentary, and the same is true for the narrative story. I have met many 60s scoop survivors over the years: friends, babysitters, significant others, and even my own family: my aunt was adopted out a generation before me. I was fortunate enough to reconnect with my family in my teens, but the emotional elements remain the same whatever the age of connection.