It didn’t end with Cleo. This custody case affects Indigenous kids today

October 8, 2025·26 min·2 clips

Linda had to take parenting courses just to learn how to hug her children — because residential school taught her only violence.

The frame is a custody fight. Linda wants her child, Letitia, returned to her First Nation. The foster parents say Letitia belongs with them now. The court has to sort that out, but the episode makes clear that the fight carries more than one household's pain. Phelan Johnson introduces it as a case that helped shape how Canadians live today. Linda starts with the house. It was cold and poor, and she says she asked Child and Family Services for help until she could find a safer place. The danger around Letitia was also personal. Lloyd Woods, Linda's husband, had just left jail after assaulting her. He was angry because Letitia had been conceived while he was locked up. Letitia grew up hearing that story. She was told Lloyd had threatened her life, and that foster care was the option meant to keep her safe. Linda's story does not let the episode leave it there. She says Sandy Bay residential school took her from her family, and that her parents and most of her fourteen siblings were forced into the schools too. That damage followed her into motherhood. She says parenting courses helped her learn how to hug, hold, love, and sing to her children. The episode does not soften the abuse, and it does not treat alcohol use as a loose character flaw. It ties that coping to the pain Linda describes and to the history she survived. By the end, the case feels less like a neat safety decision and more like a fight over who got to define a child's best interests. Immediate risk matters. So do family separation, residential school, and the law's view of Indigenous family life. Part two turns to the legal battle over who would raise Letitia, and how that battle later mattered in adoption and custody disputes in Canada.

As heard by us

A sober, family-centered account of an Indigenous custody case with consequences that reach well beyond one child.

A custody fight over an Indigenous child opens onto something colder than one family dispute: a legal system deciding where a child belongs, and how much weight it gives to kinship, safety, and culture when they collide.

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Why you'd press play

You want a custody story that grows into a landmark Canadian court case.

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