Original-Cin Q&A: Meadowlarks Director, Star on Unravelling a Fraught Indigenous Story

By Bonnie Laufer

Meadowlarks is a powerful new film from director Tasha Hubbard, bringing together an intimate narrative of family, memory, and the Indigenous experience with strikingly cinematic landscapes.

Anchored by compelling performances from Michael Greyeyes, Carmen Moore, Alex Rice, and Michelle Thrush, the film explores how the past echoes through generations — and how healing often begins in the quietest of moments when Cree siblings who were separated by the Sixties Scoop meet for the first time as adults.

Bonnie Laufer spoke with Hubbard and Greyeyes about the film and its origins. Meadowlarks opens Canada-wide November 28.

ORIGINAL-CIN: The film recently had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. How special was that for you?

TASHA HUBBARD: It was incredible. This is my first dramatic feature and my first TIFF. So, to be in a Special Presentation and to walk the red carpet with Michael and the fabulous cast was a dream come true.

MICHAEL GREYEYES: TIFF is my hometown festival. I spent a lot of my life in Toronto, even though I'm from Western Canada. That festival has a special place in my heart and for us to have Meadowlarks there was particularly important for all of us. Certainly because of the size of the platform as a launching place for this kind of storytelling, I think it is really important. In the past few years, the projects that I love the most are being led by Indigenous creatives. To have those two things come together at TIFF was really special.

O-C: Tasha, Meadowlarks stemmed from a documentary you made almost 10 years ago. What convinced you the storyline would be perfect for a feature film?

TH: I was very happy to take Birth of a Family to Hot Docs, another great Toronto festival, it was my first time screening a film there too. I met Julia Rosenberg, who's one of the producers at that festival, and we just started talking and she asked me if I was interested in working in scripted filmmaking and I said, ‘I am and I have ideas, but it feels like a big leap.’

It was actually her idea, because she loved the documentary so much, and she said, ‘You shot it like a drama and part of that was because of the real family.’ I didn't want to have the same kinds of interventions that happen in a documentary, because this was their first and only time of having that special meeting. All reuniting on camera for the first time was truly special, but they also agreed to do it on camera. It was carefully planned so that we could capture the moment.

Also, when you're making films with real people and especially, with Indigenous subjects, we've been so misrepresented in television and film that I take that responsibility seriously. We had negotiated some boundaries with the real family and I was happy to do that.

When it came to the idea about making the feature film, I thought, ‘I've met a lot of Sixties Scoop people in my lifetime. It's also been my experience.’ I really wanted to explore the past in the present and how they're connecting together, and that was the genesis of Meadowlarks. It gave me the opportunity to dive into a fictional space and not have the same restrictions around working with real-life subjects.

O-C: Michael, there are many people in this country sadly not familiar with the Sixties Scoop. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it plays into the main story of the film.

MG: When I talk about the projects I do, the films that I make, a lot of people are familiar or becoming more familiar with our history and the histories of our governments both in the United States and Canada. When I talk about Indian residential schools and the boarding school system in the U.S., people kind of nod their heads. When I told them I'm doing a film about the Sixties Scoop, they'd all go, ‘What?’ No one had heard of it. Indigenous people have grown up with the knowledge of it, just as we did Indian residential school.

The Sixties Scoop is a policy framework that took place in Canada and the United States. It’s a bit of a misnomer, because it occurred over two decades; a policy in which the government deemed Indigenous families incapable for various reasons — poverty being one of them — of raising their children, so they were taken by the system. These children grew up away from community, culture, language and family. Our film is a deep dive into a moment where siblings that were raised apart from each other come together over a fraught but beautiful weekend.

O-C: Tasha, you've worked with Michael before, but finding the three actors to play his sisters had to have been a challenging process. Yet the four of them blended so well on screen.

TH: Michael and I worked together years ago so when I started thinking about making Meadowlarks, I knew he would be cast as the brother, Anthony. I held a formal casting call because there's so many incredible Indigenous women actors in that age group it was hard to choose! I was in awe of [actors] Carmen Moore and Michaelle Thrush who I also knew from their previous work. We probably could have cast another three, four siblings, easily making it a big family, but the three we chose were just really apparent early on, they all spoke to how the characters resonated so much with them.

We were really worried about finding a sibling that had been adopted out into Europe and finding someone who could carry that European demeanor and accent. We were honestly very stressed about it for a long time. Then Alex Rice sent in her tape, I watched and went ‘Oh, there we go.’ It was thrilling to have such a talented and caring cast.

O-C: Michael, I mentioned the special bond of the on-screen siblings. Was it easy for the four of you to connect on such a deep and personal level?

MG: It was a beautiful project to work on. First, because I knew my castmates Michelle Thrush and Alex Rice quite well. We'd worked together previously; there was a long-standing relationship and friendship in place. Carmen was an actor I hadn't met before. So, there was sort of a fresh quality to our working relationship. I think that an essential part of casting is trying to find people who can really gel and there are edges built into the narrative about how these people would interact.

But underneath it was really about these long-standing friendships I have with Tasha, the other cast members, and then, of course, our relationship as Indigenous people to this history we're all tied to it. It affects all of us. Those things were like this beautiful recipe that came together in the process with Tasha guiding us through.