In 2017, acclaimed Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard premiered Birth of a Family at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto.
The documentary centres on four Cree siblings who were forcibly taken from their young mother as part of the Sixties Scoop, the large-scale removal of Indigenous children from their families into the child welfare system. Hubbard’s lens tenderly observed the siblings as they met for the first time in fifty years.
Following that 2017 screening, producer Julia Rosenberg approached Hubbard and suggested she turn Birth of a Family into a scripted feature film. At first, Hubbard was apprehensive.
For the past two decades, Hubbard had been making docs. With films like Two Worlds Colliding (2004), which investigates the “freezing deaths” of Indigenous men at the hands of Saskatoon police, nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up (2019), about the killing of Colten Boushie, and Singing Back the Buffalo (2024), Hubbard has fearlessly told Indigenous stories about standing up to colonial power and violence.
Moving to drama was daunting, but once Hubbard and Rosenberg really started discussing the idea, the emotional potential unfurled at breakneck speed.
Soon, Meadowlarks was born. The film, written by Hubbard alongside author and playwright Emil Sher, takes place over the course of one week as siblings Anthony (played by Michael Greyeyes), Gwen (Michelle Thrush), Connie (Carmen Moore) and Marianne (Alex Rice) come together for the first time since early childhood. Now in their 50s, they’re excited, but awkward and hesitant. Their interactions are stilted by years of hurt and the coping mechanisms they wear as armour.
Though inspired by the siblings featured in the documentary, the characters in the film are “not meant to be a correlation in any way,” Hubbard tells me. We’re huddled over my voice recorder on the second floor of the TIFF Lightbox, where, later in the evening, Meadowlarks had its premiere as a part of the 2026 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.
In Meadowlarks, Hubbard saw an opportunity to “explore fictional characters’ interior lives and their past experiences more than we were able to in the documentary.”
“Emil and I spent a lot of time thinking about these characters, and I brought my own experience of knowing Sixties Scoop, being part of it, knowing the different experiences that people went through, and how that affected them,” she says.
Hubbard was adopted by a non-Indigenous family at the tail-end of the Sixties Scoop. When she was 16, her adoptive parents helped her reconnect with her birth parents. Today, in addition to being a filmmaker, Hubbard is an academic, and she considers her films the fruits of her academic labour. With Meadowlarks, the goal was to present a cross-section of the experiences that violent removal from family and culture can lead to.
The character of Anthony had only ever been a foster child. When he turned 18, he ventured out on his own and learned to survive by making himself small. Gwen is a single mother whose tough exterior protects a sea of hurt around loss. Connie was adopted by a kind white family, but after her parents passed away, she began to question her identity. Marianne was adopted by a family in Belgium and became a star athlete. Coming from a soft life full of love, she is able to offer her new siblings the kindness they have been waiting for.
The siblings express hurt, discomfort, and frustration with themselves and each other; though intuitively aware of their relationship to each other, they have a hard time navigating their newfound roles. “They’re just trying to protect themselves, right? But to form a family bond means vulnerability and taking belief,” Hubbard says. “Who’s ready to do that and who’s not?”
Meadowlarks is patient, willing to meander as it explores the nuanced reasons for the siblings’ hurts and desires.
This pacing, she explains, is rooted in Indigenous storytelling. “Indigenous storytellers will often — you know, there’s a beginning, middle, and end — but they’ll take you on a journey in between those (places), and they’ll always circle back.”
Like much of Hubbard’s work, Meadowlarks subverts how Indigenous subjects are typically represented in film.
Too often, she explains, films about Indigenous people focus on colonial violence or other abusive situations, because these things are visceral and easy to capture. And though Hubbard does not shy away from those issues, with Meadowlarks she wanted to explore more subtle elements of the story, such as how individuals respond to abuse and trauma.
What do the contours of their feelings — hurt, fear, joy, calmness — look like? Capturing the unique and diverse shapes of Indigenous experience is crucial for Hubbard.
Near the end of the film, the siblings are invited to a smudging ceremony facilitated by two elders. The ceremony is designed to help the siblings reconnect with the culture they have been disconnected from. Each of them is awkward as they wash the smoke over themselves. The elders are patient and feel no need to correct their movement.
“This (ceremony) is what everyone who’s gone through this experience wants and needs. It’s their birthright” Hubbard explains. “It’s okay that they don’t exactly know what they’re doing, they’re accepted and loved anyway.”
Like Meadowlarks as a whole, it’s a moving scene, one that challenges the type of storytelling that Indigenous filmmakers are expected to produce.
The key is having confidence in expressing one’s perspective, Hubbard says — “in knowing your story and having faith in your own experiences” — no matter how complex or messy.
“We know our stories,” she says “We need to stay strong to tell them.”
Meadowlarks is available to stream on APTN+ and Crave.
