‘Sugarcane’ delves into horrific past at Indigenous boarding school

SEATTLE — Growing up, spending time on the Canim Lake Band (Tsqéscen First Nation) reserve with his extended family in British Columbia, Julian Brave NoiseCat would hear stories. They were horrifying, unspeakable stories about what happened to babies at St. Joseph’s Mission in Williams Lake, B.C., one of many residential schools that North American governments once forced Native children to attend for purposes of assimilation.

“I honestly dismissed those stories as sort of rez legends,” NoiseCat said, in a Zoom interview in mid-August. “It sounded too grisly to be true.” He learned much later that “not only were those stories true,” but he believes his father to be the only known survivor of a pattern of infanticide at the school. Their story is part of a history of abuse, at St. Joseph’s and numerous other Native boarding schools.

NoiseCat, a writer, filmmaker and Salish historian who now lives in Bremerton, made a film with co-director Emily Kassie about those true stories. The documentary “Sugarcane” poignantly grapples with the hellish legacy of St. Joseph’s — and the recent discovery, in 2021, of evidence of unmarked graves around the school. The film is the winner of a special jury prize at SIFF last spring and multiple awards at other film festivals.

There were once hundreds of boarding schools for Native children in North America, housing thousands of children taken from their homes beginning in the early 1800s — including at least 17 schools in Washington state. The schools were government-funded, but many were operated by religious groups — in the case of St. Joseph’s, the Catholic congregation of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. In recent years, more light has been shone on what those schools really were: places designed to eradicate Indigenous culture, where physical and sexual abuse of children was common. In a 2024 report commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Bryan Newland, assistant secretary for Indian affairs, wrote “ … these institutions are not just part of our past. Their legacy reaches us today, and is reflected in the wounds people continue to experience in communities across the United States.”

Kassie and NoiseCat have known each other since their first journalism jobs at the Huffington Post a decade ago, but this is their first film collaboration. It was initiated by Kassie, who felt “pulled and drawn” to this story after hearing of the discovery of the graves in 2021. A film on this topic, she thought, would be a perfect combination of their skills — “myself coming from a visual journalism and documentary practice, Julian being an incredible writer, thinker and historian of Indigenous life in North America.” She had no idea that NoiseCat’s family had a direct connection to the school in Williams Lake — and NoiseCat was startled to hear that “out of 139 [Native residential schools] in Canada, Em happened to choose the one school where, as you know, this story was essential to my existence.”

NoiseCat said he didn’t know a lot about the residential schools growing up; on a few occasions, he “mustered the courage” to ask his grandmother about St. Joseph’s, but she never went into much detail. (In the film, NoiseCat’s grandmother says, through tears, “I went through a lot.”) Eventually he learned that his father was born there, under unthinkable circumstances. Among the unforgettable scenes in “Sugarcane” are many of NoiseCat and his father, Ed Archie NoiseCat, quietly facing their family story together.

Other stories intersect in the film, most notably that of former Williams Lake First Nation Chief Rick Gilbert, a St. Joseph’s survivor and devout Catholic who traveled to the Vatican in 2022, hoping to find some resolution after learning, through DNA analysis, that his father was a priest. “We were initially drawn to his story because of this really strong tension he had between his faith and his spirituality and his community and the church and trying to figure out who he really was,” Kassie said. “What was really remarkable about his journey is that he was able, in what ended up being the last year of his life, to face his darkest truths and free himself in many ways before he passed into the next world.”

Gilbert died of cancer in 2023, before he could see the finished film. NoiseCat said, “What he did was the most courageous thing I’ve ever seen anybody do in my life.”

“Sugarcane” will be touring Indigenous reservations across the U.S. and Canada in the coming months. “We would love this film to reach every single Indigenous community on the continent if we could,” NoiseCat said. It has already screened in Williams Lake, with many members of NoiseCat’s family and tribe present. Though initially nervous about showing the film to people so closely connected to it, NoiseCat said the screening was a great success: “People were incredibly moved. … There were lots of prayers, lots of love and hugs and warmth.”

Now that “Sugarcane” is out in the world, NoiseCat feels that it may help others heal, as it did for him. For most of his life, he said, he’s lived far from Canim Lake, and “this documentary in a lot of ways brought me home, brought me back to my dad, back to the community, leading me to begin to speak my language more often, taking on certain ceremonial commitments in the life of our nation and community, and it led me to think about my role as a storyteller. … I think that in a way, Em and this documentary called me to what I needed to do, not just as a director and as a film producer but as a full human being at this moment of reckoning.”

While the Catholic Church has not made any kind of response to the film thus far, Kassie said, “we’re eager and hopeful that they will see the film.” NoiseCat said he would welcome a response, but that ultimately, healing needs to happen elsewhere.

“There are so many stories like my father’s, like Rick’s. Ultimately, the places where I think we can find real healing are not going to probably be in the church or the empty words of politicians. It’ll be in the places where we live, in our homes and families and our cultures and our languages, all of those things that were nearly broken by the residential schools, but still remain.”