Dawnland Film Screening

Members of East Shore’s Indigenous Connections Team welcome you to a free screening of Dawnland, an award-winning 2018 film produced by Upstander Project. The Dawnland documentary presents an untold story of indigenous Wabanaki children forcibly separated from their families and their culture. These children were adopted or placed in foster homes by the child welfare system of Maine which assumed assimilating into white society would improve their lives. Told through the investigative work of the nation’s first government-endorsed Truth and Reconciliation Commission, their story brings to light the physical and psychological abuse they endured. It also details their non-native neighbors’ struggle with the challenge of moving from the role of occupiers to neighbors. Please join the discussion immediately after the film to talk about the impacts of forced family separations as well as the power reconciliation may, or may not, have to heal those who suffered.