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In PBS series ‘Little Bird,’ a Jewish woman uncovers her traumatic Indigenous past
(JTA) — When Jennifer Podemski’s Indigenous mother gave birth at 17, social workers removed Podemski from a Toronto hospital and put her into the foster care system. It was only through the efforts of one social worker, who was retiring, that she was reunited with her mother at three months old.
The social worker had saved Podemski from the infamous “Sixties Scoop,” a policy in Canada between the 1960s and 1980s that tore thousands of Indigenous children from their families and put them into the child welfare system.
Growing up in a Jewish area of Toronto, Podemski learned more about her Israeli father’s side of the family because of the Jewish stories she was surrounded by — including some imparted from her paternal grandfather, a Holocaust survivor.
Now a filmmaker, Podemski has drawn heavily on her experience in co-creating “Little Bird,” a six-part series about the Sixties Scoop that debuted in Canada earlier this year and came to the United States on Oct. 12. Weekly episodes air on PBS through Nov. 16 and are available to stream on all PBS platforms, including PBS Masterpiece Prime Video.
“I wanted to humanize these experiences,” said Podemski, who is Indigenous to Saskatchewan on her mother’s side. “They haven’t yet been humanized because they haven’t been told.”
The show starts with Esther Rosenblum (played by Darla Contois) at her engagement party in 1985, enjoying almost-clichéd Jewish success — law school, a doctor fiancé named David and a large home shared with her tough-love adoptive mother. The mother, Polish-born Golda Rosenblum (Lisa Edelstein), survived the Holocaust and came to Canada as a teenager, having lost her entire family in Auschwitz.
Although Esther’s life looks pleasant, she tiptoes around a constant simmer of discrimination. She is shattered to overhear David’s mother fretting about him marrying “one of them,” referring to an Indigenous person adopted into a Jewish family. The future mother-in-law questions how their family is supposed to believe that Esther is a “regular Jew” who can become “a mother of her own — and that’s just going to go fine?” Another guest points out that David got “one of the good ones,” adding: “I have a cousin who adopted one of them and he’s into the drugs and all that stuff.”
A parallel storyline unfolds in 1968, when Esther was five years old and her name was Bezhig Little Bird. Bezhig was abducted along with her brother and sister by child welfare agents and police, who handcuffed their hysterical mother and beat their father, when he protested, to the brink of death. The series follows Esther/Bezhig on the journey to find her birth family and understand the roots she was torn from.
Like Esther, Podemski was raised in a Jewish community with a tenuous connection to her Indigenous ancestry. Her maternal grandparents were victims of the residential school system in Canada, which forcibly separated children from their families for long periods of time between the 1880s and the 1990s. The schools stripped children of their culture and native language, with the nominal objective of giving them a Euro-Canadian Christian education. The schools became notorious for physical, sexual and psychological abuse and high death rates.
Podemski had to seek out information on Indigenous history as a teenager, when she began studying the atrocities committed against her people. She chafed at discriminatory remarks within her childhood Jewish community, even when they were unintentional, and struggled to feel at home.
“I grew up in a Jewish reality, one that I didn’t really fit into, the way I look,” Podemski told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I never felt really like I belonged in either [Jewish or Indigenous] places.”
Podemski’s 30-year career has spanned both acting and producing, with a break-out role in Bruce McDonald’s 1994 film “Dance Me Outside” and award-winning credits for the 2003-2006 series “Moccasin Flats” and the 2013 film “Empire of Dirt.” Frustrated with the representation of Indigenous people in film and TV, she founded Big Soul Productions and Redcloud Studios Inc. to amplify Indigenous perspectives. Between 2021 and 2023, she appeared opposite her sisters Tamara and Sarah Podemski in the acclaimed FX series “Reservation Dogs.”
Jennifer Podemski, left, with her sister Sarah at the 2023 Canadian Screen Awards at Meridian Hall in Toronto, April 14, 2023. (Jeremy Chan/Getty Images)
“Little Bird” places a premium on representation, with Indigenous Canadian actors playing the Little Bird family and Edelstein, who starred in the popular medical drama “House,” as Esther’s Jewish mother. The creators consulted advisors from Raven Sinclair, a Sixties Scoop survivor and University of Regina professor, to rabbis who approved scenes of Jewish ceremonies.
Edelstein told JTA that she reached into her own family memories to play Golda Rosenblum, conjuring images of her Jewish grandparents who immigrated from Eastern Europe.
“I was really excited to get to play a Jewish woman and to represent that story with dignity,” said Edelstein. “She reminded me a lot of my grandparents, so I definitely was remembering the gestures and feelings that I got from them.”
At the time of Esther’s fictional adoption, middle-class parents were typically advised to erase the past of their adopted Indigenous children, who were presented as mistreated or abandoned. Golda is at first defensive of her decision to help obscure Esther’s origins, but her love for her daughter eventually makes her a hero of the story.
“When I first met you, you were all dressed up in a nice dress but you didn’t smile,” she tells Esther in the series. “I thought, she has lost everyone, I have lost everyone, this is a good match. But it wasn’t true — you had a family.”
Co-creator Hannah Moskovitch said she felt a heavy sense of responsibility, as a Jew, approaching a story about the near annihilation of a culture. Although the histories are entirely different, some elements of state-executed plans to destroy the Indigenous people in North America and the Jews in Europe looked similar to her — from the meticulous bureaucracy and dutifully law-abiding foot soldiers to the dehumanizing language of “solutions” to Indigenous “problems.”
Yet despite those parallels, Moskovitch had never heard of the Sixties Scoop before starting work on the series.
“It’s shameful that I didn’t know,” she told JTA. “I grew up with the injunction from my community, ‘Never forget.’ And then there was a genocide that had happened in my country that I didn’t know about.”
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The post In PBS series ‘Little Bird,’ a Jewish woman uncovers her traumatic Indigenous past appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.
Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”
The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.
President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.
In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.
The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”
“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks
IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.
Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.
A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery.
“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner.
“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.”
Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.
“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks.
Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.
The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations.
“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.
The post IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.