New series tells story of Sixties Scoop survivor learning about her past

WARNING: This story contains distressing details

The co-creator and showrunner for a series premiering this week hopes that her personal connection to the subject matter will shine through.

"I just hope people feel the love that was put into this, and I hope that non-Indigenous people feel connected to it because the stories are relatable, but also I guess unique, in the sense that nobody really knows very much about the Sixties Scoop," said Jennifer Podemski, an award winning producer and actor from Muscowpetung Saulteaux Nation in Saskatchewan, which is about 60 kilometres from Regina.

Little Bird, which premiers May 26 on Crave and APTN Lummi, is a six-part series about a young woman's journey as she searches for her birth family and discovers truths of her past.

One of these discoveries is that she was apprehended during the Sixites Scoop, a government practice in Canada from the 1960s to 1980s of removing Indigenous children from their homes and placing them in foster homes or putting them up for adoption.

The protagonist in Little Bird is Esther Rosenblum, who was fostered into a Jewish family not knowing where she was from or why she was fostered out.

Esther's search eventually leads her to the Prairies to find her birth family.

Podemski is Anishinaabe and Cree on her mother's side and Jewish on her father's. Her mother and grandparents were residential school survivors and her father's parents were Holocaust survivors.

Podemski said Little Bird was a perfect opportunity to create something that was close to her lived experience in terms of identity.

She was brought the idea for the story and thought of her experiences working with Sixties Scoop survivors. Developing the show took six years from concept to completion.

"I tried to make it very Saskatchewan-centric just because it made sense for me to to have that more authentic voice," she said.

Darla Contios was contemplating quitting acting for good when she received an email from one of the casting directors about auditions for Little Bird.

She decided to give it one more go and audition for Esther. She got the role.

Contois is from Grand Rapids Cree Nation but lives in Winnipeg. She studied at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People and is a graduate of a three-year program at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre.