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(Photo courtesy Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak / Facebook)
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A tearful and emotional reunion took place recently in Manitoba.
As Dan Karpenchuk reports, a Sixties Scoop survivor was reunited with his Indigenous family after 50 years.
Jonathan Hooker was taken from his family in 1975. He was two-month old. He is from the Mosakahiken Cree Nation in northern Manitoba.
His new middle class white family moved to New Zealand when he was 18-months old.
Hooker always knew he was adopted, but was never able to locate his birth mother. That is until an ancestry test, which led him to make contact with his half sister who lives in Texas.
“So hopefully somebody else will see this and hopefully maybe start looking for their family or it will give them clues to reach out and help.”
Hooker had tried to find his natural family a few years ago on a visit to Canada, but without success.
This time he was embraced by his biological mother, Patsy George, when he arrived at the airport in Winnipeg.
“I thought I would never see him again. He was only two-months old when they took him away from me. And my other daughter a month old.”
George also recently found out that Hooker was married and had children.
She said she would see her grandchildren one day.
It is believed that about 300,000 Indigenous children were taken from their homes in a government operation known as the Sixties Scoop.
Many were placed with non-Indigenous families across Canada and around the world.
(Courtesy Hulu)
A haunting crime story and an Alaska Native legend are at the center of a new documentary that will premiere on the streaming platform Hulu on September 4.
The Alaska Desk’s Alena Naiden from our flagship station KNBA has more on “Blood & Myth“.
The film looks into a real-life crime case that happened in Kiana, in Northwest Alaska, over a decade ago.
James Dommek Jr. is the executive producer of the new documentary.
“It’s just incredible story of survival and legends and violence and culture.”
Dommek worked at KNBA for three years starting in 2016. During his time there, a co-worker asked him if he knew any Alaska stories that would make a good podcast.
Dommek told him about Teddy Kyle Smith, an Iñupiaq actor from Kiana.
In 2012, troopers were investigating the suspicious death of his mother, when Smith fled to a cabin and had a violent encounter with two hunters. He was later convicted of attempted murder.
Smith said that Iñukuns, or Little People, guided his actions.
(Courtesy Hulu)
Dommek described the incident in his 2019 audiobook called “Midnight Son”.
The new Hulu documentary is a movie adaptation of the audiobook.
Dommek grew up in Kotzebue hearing about Iñukuns. They are creatures that exist in various legends from Inuit groups across the globe.
“If all of us had the same story, and we’re also spread out, it might have an air of truth to it.”
In the film, Dommek says he also wanted to highlight the issue of justice in rural Alaska, where the state struggles to provide a consistent law enforcement presence.
Dommek says that “Blood & Myth” is a true crime documentary told through an Indigenous perspective, which is rare in today’s entertainment industry.
“There’s the type of story I wanted to see and no one was making it. So I made it for me. Everyone else is invited to listen and watch, but at the end of the day, it’s something I made for me.”
Dommek has worked in film production, but being an executive producer in his own film is a first for him.
He says he wondered if it was his story to tell but decided to do it after talking to his family and elders in his community.
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