Julian Brave NoiseCat initially didn’t want “Sugarcane” to be such a personal film.
The Indigenous filmmaker says he intended to remain behind the camera for the Sundance prize-winning documentary, which he co-directed with Toronto’s Emily Kassie.
The film is a quietly haunting account of deaths, rapes, suicides and missing children at the former St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, a Catholic-run facility near Sugar Cane reserve in Williams Lake, B.C.
But NoiseCat quickly realized the film would be incomplete if he and his family weren’t part of it.
“My family had stories that cut to the core of the infanticide that happened at St. Joseph's Mission,” NoiseCat, a member of the Canim Lake Band in British Columbia, says on a recent video call from Martha’s Vineyard, where he was screening the film.
“I felt that if I wasn't willing to go there with my own story and my own family's story, then would I really be giving this documentary my all?”
NoiseCat appears in the doc with his father Ed Archie NoiseCat, who was born at St. Joseph's Mission. The film explores long-standing allegations that priests who fathered children with school residents sent the infants to an incinerator.
“Sugarcane,” which won the directing prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, explores the horrors at St. Joseph’s and its ripple effects, while putting human faces to the tragic legacy of Canada’s residential school system, featuring testimonials from survivors.
NoiseCat traces the film’s genesis to 2021 when the Tkemlups te Secwepemc First Nation said about 200 possible unmarked burial sites had been found around the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Kassie, who used to work with NoiseCat at The Huffington Post, reached out to her former colleague about collaborating on a documentary about the discovery.
“I was born and raised in Canada but I had never turned my lens on my own country and the atrocities committed against its First Peoples,” says Kassie, an Emmy and Peabody-nominated investigative journalist and filmmaker.
Kassie called NoiseCat to tell him she had connected with the Williams Lake First Nation, which was leading an investigation into the grounds of the former St. Joseph’s Mission, which operated from 1886 to 1981.
“There was a long pause on my end of the line, and then I said, ‘Wow, that's really crazy. Did you know that that's the school that my family was taken away to and where my father's life began?” recounts NoiseCat.
“Out of 139 residential schools across Canada, Emily happened to choose the one school that my family was sent to.”
The film follows two people involved with the investigation — Charlene Belleau and Whitney Spearing — as they collect testimonies from survivors about their experiences at St. Joseph’s.
“Sugarcane” also explores the relationship between NoiseCat and his father, who left Williams Lake and his family.
“My father had for his entire life lingering questions about the circumstances of his birth and what happened immediately before and after,” says the 31-year-old NoiseCat.
“Finally getting some knowledge and understanding of what happened to him and his birth, and then some understanding between him and I of how that impacted both of our lives, was a really important step to finding some healing and peace. I think that story in microcosm is the story of First Nations families all across Canada and beyond.”
NoiseCat and Kassie say that despite its tough subject matter, “Sugarcane” includes humorous and heartwarming moments: NoiseCat and his father embarking on a road trip and smoking marijuana together, survivors enjoying themselves at powwows.
“A lot of this is about survival against all odds and about people rising up against extraordinary horror and hurdles,” says Kassie.
“What's so remarkable about this community is it's filled with beauty and life and family, even though that's exactly what the residential school system was trying to eliminate.”
NoiseCat says the film has received more attention — from interview requests to film festival pickups — in the United States and abroad than in Canada.
“I think it's a real shame that the Canadian government, as well as elements of the Canadian media and public, have gotten tired of hearing about residential schools,” says NoiseCat.
“This is a reality that First Nations people all across the country and beyond are still grappling with every day, and it's a matter of life or death."
"Sugarcane" hits select theatres Friday.
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The Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program has a hotline to help residential school survivors and their relatives suffering with trauma invoked by the recall of past abuse. The number is 1-866-925-4419.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 8, 2024.
Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press
