Lost Sparrow Essay

1152 Words5 Pages

Lost Sparrow is a film about the pros and cons of inter-racial/out-of-state adoption, the death of two boys, and an exorbitant amount of secrets a single family can keep within their folds. This film shows us that secrets always come out and can directly affect relationships and the lives of those around you. Secrets are a big theme in this film, as it shows you what they can do to the people around you, and who people really are. Lost Sparrow illustrates how the truth comes out, and how it can be distorted over time depending on the people involved. Overall, this film made me angry and sad at how difficult these children’s lives were. While their adopted siblings got to live their lives without the strife of more complicated issues like child sexual abuse, …show more content…

These three points were how DSS handled the case, denial and blame, and family secrets. The issue with how DSS handled the case of the Stands Over Bull children seemed rushed and somewhat negligent. The way the documentary presented it, she did not exert much attention to finding someone to take these children within their own community. Instead, she crossed several state lines to find a couple to adopt these children, in which this family already had six children. It is great that she found a way to keep these siblings together, but in circumstances where a culture is so different from outside cultures, it seems best to look inside their own culture first. Following this point, when their native American community did intend to bring them home after the death of two of their boys, the DSS caseworker kept the letter they tried to send via her to the Billings for decades; and then she sent back a forged letter from “Diann” denying that request. This makes me wonder whether there was something else the caseworker was covering up about this case, or did she just not want to do additional