Watchlist: ‘The Good Canadian’ trailer

By Kamiah Koch

Social media/ digital journalist

Earlier in the summer, the Indigenous Journalists Association held the first U.S. screening of the 2025 documentary, “The Good Canadian.” This film explores Canada’s history of injustices towards Indigenous communities and how those practices still exist today.

The documentary begins with real footage of a baby being forcefully removed from a First Nations mother who has just given birth and is recovering in the hospital. Based on the mother’s cries, there was a plan in place for the child’s safety, but Canadian Child and Family Services still intervened, going against the reunification law written in Canada’s Bill C-92.

“They always had solutions and they chose not to implement those solutions,” Canadian Activist Cindy Blackstock said in the documentary trailer. “It was a conscience choice.”

Firsthand-account interviews with Indigenous people, experts in law and police officials paint a stark reality of what continues to occur at the hands of the Canadian government.

“There are more Indigenous children in foster care now than at the height of residential schools and the Sixties Scoop (a period from the late 1950s to the 1980s when Canadian child welfare authorities removed thousands of Indigenous children from their families and communities) so something is broken and needs to be fixed,” another voice said in the trailer.

A different interview with the former police official describes the suspicious circumstances around a young Indigenous person’s death and others like it.

The documentary concludes with a message emphasizing the importance of national recognition of these injustices in order for change to occur.

“The moment the headlines die, the children do too,” Blackstock said. “What Canadians need to do is not turn the page.”

One of the directors of the film, Leena Minifie, was present at the documentary screening held in Portland Thursday, July 23, and  hosted a question-and-answer session afterward.

Minifie told Smoke Signals they are still working on sharing this film in the states, but it is currently available on the CBC network. You can watch the trailer for the documentary on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFiB4wNyQWg.