Here’s one you’ll like: a man comes home to find his wife handcuffed to the wall and his young children missing. They have been taken by child protection services due to the lack of a fridge in the house, which is treated as a sign of neglect. When he confronts law enforcement officials outside, they beat him to death.
Decades later, one of the children, now adopted into a Jewish home in Montreal, goes looking for the family she lost, risking the collapse of her new life to do so. I never said it was a joke. Although it turns out there was a fridge, behind the house.
Watching Little Bird (18 August, 9pm, Sky Atlantic), I was reminded that TV is capable of more than mere entertainment, something we lose sight of when we think of it as a purely profit-or loss-making enterprise. I felt the visceral anger and sadness of this story of a First Nations woman caught between cultures, robbed by forces beyond her control and stonewalled by the authorities. Set in Canada, the attitude, if not the events, feel shamefully familiar.
Although fiction, the story is real. Canada’s colonial history includes the Sixties Scoop – the mass abduction of First Nations children, forcibly taken by welfare services and rehomed with white families. Their adoption papers were sealed, effectively giving them no contact with parents or clue as to their heritage.
Little Bird’s six episodes examine the long shadow of this cultural genocide through one family. At the end of each episode we are reminded that there are more Indigenous children in the care system than ever before. Our self-elected detective is Esther Rosenblum, now in her 20s.
Her only clue is a clipping of the newspaper advertisement placing her up for adoption. This is how she knows her real name: Bezhig Little Bird. Bezhig is Ojibwe for one – a fact with a cruel flipside, revealed later in her search.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
