Little Bird

On a warm summer day on the Long Pine Reserve in Saskatchewan in 1968, Bezhig Little Bird and her sister and brother are ripped away from their traumatized mother by police and child welfare agents to be put up for adoption by white families. Now, 18 years later, Bezhig, who was renamed Esther Rosenblum by her adoptive family, is living as a Jewish woman in Montreal who doesn’t quite feel a sense of belonging in her comfortable life.

Esther finds her adoption papers, and a newspaper clipping that evoke fuzzy memories of her young life on the Long Pine Reserve, before she was adopted. She is determined to learn more, so she uproots her life, sacrificing everything, in search of her family and who she is.

Patti Little Bird is desperate to get her kids back, but she doesn’t know where they have been taken. Eighteen years later, Bezhig/Esther, who has made her way back to the prairies, is desperate to find her family. Both women are lost, tangled in the exact same place, decades apart.

Esther finds members of her family who help her put together the pieces of the past. She returns home to Montreal to confront Golda, her adoptive mother about the revelations she’s uncovered that shine a new light on their life and change the way they can look at the past.

Esther returns to the prairies and continues her pursuit of uncovering her past. Reconnecting the severed ties of a broken family is not easy. When tragedy strikes, Esther realizes that she needs her mother, Golda, more than anything.

After much love and sorrow, the Little Bird family come together to mourn death and celebrate life. Esther and Golda are both changed from this journey of self-discovery, but it has strengthened their bond as mother and daughter and instilled a new sense of identity in Esther. The journey has been onerous, but Esther has finally found what she’s been looking for.