TORONTO — Director Tasha Hubbard didn’t have far to look for inspiration in order to capture the complex emotions of separated Indigenous siblings who meet for the first time as adults.
Her new family drama “Meadowlarks” borrows heavily from her 2017 documentary “Birth of a Family,” which traced a momentous weekend for three sisters and a brother who bond in elation and grief decades after being taken from their mother as babies in the ‘60s Scoop.
Like that non-fiction account, Hubbard’s scripted saga explores the painful legacy of government policies that continues to ripple through generations of fractured families, including her own.
Hubbard was adopted in the ‘70s through the Adopt Indian and Métis Project in Saskatchewan, designed to place Indigenous children in white adoptive homes.
She found her birth family in her teens, which brought the bewildering experience of recognizing parts of herself in people who were otherwise strangers. It was written into one scene in “Meadowlarks” as two characters discover they have similar features.
“That was inspired by my meeting my mother when I was 16,” said Hubbard, born in Saskatoon and raised about an hour south of Regina until she was about 11.
“I don’t obviously resemble her and it was really disconcerting. And then I saw, ‘Oh, there’s my hands.’ I have her hands – that’s my mother. And it was a way to connect.
“So we wanted to have those similar moments, to have audiences understand the range of impact that these have had and also the resilience that our families are showing in the efforts to repair and reconnect and love and celebrate and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ for the first time to each other. These are really important moments.”
While she hopes its exploration of ‘60s Scoop fallout can be revelatory, Hubbard said “Meadowlarks” is first and foremost a family drama touching on mid-life struggles.
“At the heart it’s about four siblings who were separated, who are trying to find themselves in their 50s and re-form a bond that was broken. And I think anyone who’s in a family where it’s complicated, there’s a lot to relate to in there,” she said from Edmonton before the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
“The fact that it’s an Indigenous family just adds another layer to it that is really beautiful.”
While there are obvious similarities to the documentary, Hubbard said the characters in “Meadowlarks” are not based on the real-life people of “Birth of a Family.” She said fictionalized drama allowed her to better explore “the more subtle psychology of not growing up with your family, of being constantly the different one.”
“Especially in the Prairies, the vast majority of ’60s Scoop (children) ended up in families where they were the only Indigenous person. They ended up in communities where they were the only Indigenous person. So they carry that difference with them all the time,” said Hubbard, who co-wrote the screenplay with novelist and playwright Emil Sher.
“So how does that impact who you become as an adult? And when you are coming into this beautiful situation of possibility, all the siblings are carrying that baggage.”
Each of the Cree siblings face their own hurdles to healing: Carmen Moore plays group leader and consummate organizer Connie, Michelle Thrush is the tough but vulnerable single mother Gwen, Michael Greyeyes is the emotionally stunted Anthony, and Alex Rice is Belgium-raised Marianne, who has the least sense of her Indigenous identity.
Missing from the gathering is the oldest child George, too raw from the trauma of separation to even attempt a connection with his long-lost relatives.
Thrush said she knows people who have found their way back to their birth family and the difficulty involved in reaching out.
“I meet a lot of people who come up and they tell me their story of how they were taken away and it took so much to come home,” she said from Calgary before the TIFF premiere.
“And I just honour the strength that it takes for them. We, as actors, played a very small part of what that courage is for those people in real life who have to find their way back and reconnect with family.”
Greyeyes said he hopes that audiences recognize these characters as “champions” — first, for finding each other and then for acknowledging what they’ve lost and celebrating another chance to become a family.
“It’s a story actually of a quiet triumph, a triumph of love,” said Greyeyes, reached before the TIFF premiere in Naples, Fla.
“What attracted me to this story in particular is the bonds, whether they were small or large, (and) the risks that these characters took were all in moving away from trauma.
“To become vulnerable with each other, you know, that is a success. That’s a triumph against what happened to these people.”
“Meadowlarks” opens Friday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 26, 2025.
Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press
