"Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families"

HIDDEN HISTORIES... KAVITA PURI on the legacy of Canada's residential schools

-  KAVITA PURI

I RECENTLY SAT DOWN TO WATCH THE LATEST incarnation of LM Montgomery’s classic novel Anne of Green Gables with my younger daughter. Reading the book and watching the 1980s television adaptation – starring Megan Follows as the 19th-century Canadian orphan Anne Shirley – had been such a rite of passage for me, and I wanted it to be the same for my own children.

Having been so familiar with the original story, I was surprised to find that Netflix and CBC’s 2017 adaptation, Anne with an E, had taken on a degree of dramatic licence, including the addition of a subplot about Anne’s friendship with an Indigenous girl named Ka’kwet. The carefully researched storyline, in which Ka’kwet is mistreated by the nuns at one of Canada’s notorious residential schools, was well received not only in Canada, but by viewers further afield. Overall, the series was praised for tackling a difficult topic and bringing the stories of Indigenous Canadians to a wider audience.