The Current - Sugarcane brings residential school horrors to Hollywood

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

In the Oscar-nominated Canadian documentary Sugarcane, Julian Brave Noisecat investigates the horrific history of the residential school his family attended in B.C. He and his co-director Emily Kassie talk to Matt Galloway about a story a community was reluctant to tell, and their joy at seeing a portrait of Indigenous strength celebrated by Hollywood.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, it's Matt here. Thanks for listening to The Current, wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, wonder if I might ask a favor of you if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using.

There is a lot of news that's out there these days. We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some of that news too. So if you already follow the program, thank you. If you have done that, maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well. The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that. Appreciate it. And on to today's show. In a couple of weeks time, the very best in film will be celebrated at the Academy Awards.

And among the movies nominated for an Oscar for best feature documentary is the film Sugarcane. This film tells the stories of survivors of St. Joseph's Mission School in British Columbia and follows the journey of the Williams Lake First Nation as it launches a search for potential unmarked graves and as members of that community search for answers and accountability. Sugar Cane has garnered widespread acclaim, including a directing award at the Sundance Film Festival.

Julian Brave Noisekat is one of the film's directors. He's also a central character in this film as he traces his own family's history to St. Joseph's mission. His co-director is Emily Cassie, who is a Canadian investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker and they both join us from New York City. Good morning to you both. Good morning, Matt. Glad to see you, Matt. Congratulations on this film. It is incredibly powerful and beautiful and moving. And Emily, what is it like for me to say to you that it is also an Academy Award nominee?

It's crazy, it's still hard to believe, but you know, this is a story that is the origin story of North America. It's the story of how the land was taken, how six generations of children were taken away from their families, and yet most of us knew nothing about it, and so I would say it's about damn time. Jolene, what about for you?

You are the first indigenous filmmaker from North America to be nominated for an Oscar. This is a big deal. It's also the first film directed by both an indigenous North American filmmaker and a Jewish Canadian filmmaker to be nominated for an Academy Award as well. So we're very proud of the collaboration. Obviously, you know, we hope that this film sheds light on an overlooked and often hidden

part, a foundational part, in fact, of North American history and that it also highlights the importance of, you know, stories from storytellers who come from marginalized places, particularly indigenous storytellers, because film in many instances was built on portrayals of Native people through Westerns that showed us as a dying people. And of course, our film does the exact opposite. It does indeed. Emily, you said that you felt gut pulled to this story. What did you mean by that? Well, you know, Matt, I spent a decade

as an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker telling stories all over the world about human rights abuses and genocide from Rwanda to Afghanistan to the Saharan desert, but I'd never thought to look at my own country and my own backyard. And so when possible graves were discovered on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, like so many Canadians, I was horrified.

And I also just had this feeling. I had this feeling that this was where I needed to go in the world. And the other feeling I had was that I needed to reach out to my old friend, Julian. Julian and I worked our first reporting jobs together a decade ago. We were randomly seated as reporters in a newsroom and Julian had gone on to become this incredible writer and journalist focusing on Indigenous life. What I didn't know is that I would end up following a search and selecting the very school that Julian's family attended and where his father's life began. So out of 139 schools in Canada, I happened to choose that exact one without even knowing it. And so when Julian joined, he was of course,

blown away by that. And the two of us began this sort of epic journey over three years to help tell the story. Julian, when you were growing up, how much did you know about your father and your grandmother's ties to St. Joseph's mission? I knew very little. I had spent summers in Canham Lake.

The rest of my family comes from learning Sukwet Mukhchin, the language that was nearly annihilated by St. Joseph's Mission, the school that Mike attended. When you learn a language that was nearly killed off by a residential school, you naturally might ask the woman who's teaching it, who attended that school, you know, what happened there? And from the times that I'd asked, it became very clear that it was not something that she wanted to talk about and not something that, you know, was a fond memory for her.

And I'd also heard, you know, these stories about babies being born at St. Joseph's Mission, being put in the school's incinerator. And to be completely honest with you, Matt, I thought that those were just ghost stories. I thought they were res legends and I didn't believe them. Then I came to find out, of course, through the making of True King,

that not only were those stories true, but that they were actually part of my own family story. That your father had survived. That my father had survived, yeah. And I think that while that is an exceptional story, I think that it's also representative of the story of an entire people. There were so many children who were taken away to these schools who did not return and who did not return in many senses.

You know, there were babies who were born who did not survive. There were children who were taken away who did not come back with their culture. There were children who were taken away and abused and did not come back with their whole self and who were taken away and abused and did not come back with their whole self and who were damaged. And so, you know, there was really a way that these schools robbed us of our culture and our humanity in a very fundamental way that cascades across generations even today.

And as you said, part of this is about the stories that people have that they aren't comfortable in talking about. There's this scene with your grandmother in which she says, there's so much stuff, stuff that I should have talked about, and then she just stops. Yeah, you know, that was a really incredible moment.

Julian and I talked a lot about the silences that permeate through generations of families and how the silences in this film might speak louder than what people could actually say because the pain, the internalized pain was keeping them from being able to excavate these very hard truths and the recesses of their memories. And so in that moment, you know, Julian asks his grandmother, he says, well, what kind of stuff? And instead of responding, she just twiddles her thumbs. And in that moment, I didn't rack focus to Julian because we wanted to stay on these

silences and remember that the pain of these schools is very present for people. This is not a story of the past. It's a story of people who are continuing to die as a ramifications from these schools, people who are facing the highest rates of suicide and addiction and cycles of violence and elders who can still not speak about what happened to them. One of the things that runs through this film, Julian, is the relationship between you and your father. And I want to play a little bit of a conversation that you had with your dad, Ed Archie Noyce-Catt. You're sitting in front of a fire and you're talking.

Have a listen to this. Well, for something that important to our literal existence, I think I want to know the whole story. We don't have the whole story, because I don't know it. Well, I think your mom would be the only person who knows. It's kind of like it just keeps on damaging, just keeps on going. Julian, these are really hard conversations to have in private, and you have them in public in front of a camera knowing that this is going to be seen by an audience around the world. What was it like to go into those conversations, not knowing in some ways what you would find out

in the end. Oh, well don't remind me that the whole world can watch it. You know, I think that committing to being a storyteller, right, and doing it in nonfiction means that you have to make decisions about how you choose to live your life and choose to see the world.

And you know, when you're telling stories that are about yourself and your own people You know and when your people have survived a genocide I mean that means that you have to touch some some some hard truths sometimes I think that part of what we were trying to get at through this film You know is not just the atrocious things that happened to children and their families because of the residential schools but then the way that that Colonial violence and oppression, you know traveled through our own families what it ended up making us do to ourselves and You know, I think that that's sometimes a harder part of the conversation but one that you know

I I felt like I was in a position to Break open and that I actually really wanted to because at the same time as I wanted to help my dad address his enduring pain from St. Joseph's mission, that also had some enduring consequences in my life that I wanted to address with him. How did your dad feel about you breaking that open, about going into his past in that way?

He was a really great sport about it, you know. He really enjoyed making the film. You know, he's of course an artist in his own way. And he loved going on the road trip. He became an integral part of our crew. And he's become like my best friend. And, you know, we really truly, I think healing can be kind of like a cheap word sometimes

with respect to this history. But, you know, in a deep and meaningful sense, we have really healed from this. And it's our hope that other people who share this history, indigenous peoples who have family who attended these schools, but also people who also identify with family trauma and stuff with your parents and your father can see this film

and take away that kind of a healing as well. Emily, tell me about Charlene Bello. She's also a character in this film and a really important voice in this film. That's right. Charlene Bello is a survivor of St. Joseph's mission. And she is also an intrepid investigator and advocate for survivors who has been doing this work and has been involved with every investigation at St. Joseph's Mission and other schools in BC for over 30 years. She is so committed to this that if you go into her garage, you will find boxes and boxes and boxes of documents and artifacts from the school. And she even brought one of the priests who was convicted back to the community to lead a sort of justice within the community, a sort of circle where survivors could speak the harms that this priest had done to them. She is a remarkable woman you know, woman and a real hero, to be honest.

And in this film, she leads this investigation to try to get at the truth. And I think what was so wild to us was that, you know, where we thought the film was going to be about unmarked graves, it ended up that Charlene and her team, alongside our own investigation, uncovered a pattern of infanticide at St. Joseph's Mission. Babies born at the school, some to priests, who were either adopted out, forcibly aborted, and in some cases put in the school's incinerator to be burned with the trash.

And of course, Julian's own personal investigation led him to the same truth. And we didn't know that those stories would you know align so concurrently but Charlene you know Charlene seemed to know that all of this that this time would come where the story would be told and it was her who in our first two weeks of filming texted me and said come to the barns bring Julian and bring your camera and then she performed in that scene in the film, the ceremony where she calls on him to help tell the story, and I think we would both argue that that was the beginning of Julian's journey to decide to be in the film.

Let me play that scene, and then Julian, I want to ask you about it. Have a listen. Julian, I ask you to open your eyes, your ears, your heart. Our elders are now looking to you to listen to our stories. You're bearing witness to a time in history where our people are going to stand up. You're going to make sure that people are held accountable. Julian, can you tell us about the barns

and what the barns symbolize in this? This is an incredible, it's the center in many ways of this story. So the barns, you know, are still standing, some of them, and they're actually still part of a working ranch where cattle until very recently were trotting over, you know, potential sites of remains and things of that nature. During the operation of the schools, they were a place of both abuse and refuge for

students. You know, Charlene explains that it was a place where children were flogged back in the day but also if you if you go in there you know there are etchings of the walls of students you know with their names which res they were from many last names that are very familiar and also like the year that it was sometimes they included the number that they were called by at the school and so they really are sort of a place of the memory of this institution being written

into its remaining structures in a very significant way. And it's also worth pointing out that, of course, while we didn't really explicitly talk about this in the film, the school was also like a working ranch that used child labor. And so it was a place where the children would have been doing a great deal of their work. In fact, a lot more of their work than they would have been doing at a school desk. When you go up into that hayloft and you could see this is where the children would go to

escape in some ways and they would etch into the beams some of the things where I don't care. There's another carving that says 73 days more until home time. What was going through your mind when you were in that space? You can see it as you watch the film, you can see it in your face. I mean, I think to come face to face in a way

with the pain and trauma of your ancestors is a feeling that's kind of hard to describe because, you know, I think that there's a way in which you just feel it in your own heart and your own body. And I think that that is, you know, at its core what intergenerational trauma is. You know, there are ways that history can be passed from generation to generation, the things that our ancestors endure, you know, not just through the ways that we are parented and the traumas that we experience in our own life, but also You know increasingly studies are showing like that. They actually impact our DNA. There's also another

Reality and that's one of carrying forward the traditions of our ancestors the things that were taken away by these very schools and institutions And so I think that the power of that scene is that you kind of see both. You know, you see on the one hand Charlene bringing me to a place to confront the, you know, yawning pain of the past, and at the same time, you know, to blanket me in the traditions of our ancestors, and to confer upon me the responsibility that we all share as First Peoples, you know, to carry forward the story of our people who came before and in a way that's true to our traditions so that they will live on despite, you know, many generations of government efforts to eliminate them. Emily, what was it like for you to document something like this? It was one of the most profound moments of my career as a filmmaker and also of my life

just as a human being. It felt like in that moment, you know, the world sort of broke open. There are these little holes of light that come through the barns and these winds that sweep through them. And when Charlene began to do the ceremony, there was an energy in the room. And I wasn't a very spiritual person before this film. And of course, the schools were a type of spiritual colonization as well. And it felt in that moment, as if, you know, in a way, the ghosts were coming home to tell the story that those kids who wrote on the wall, I don't care about

Lucy's baby, which brings significance later in the film and 173 more days till home time, were swirling around us as a survivor and a descendant of the only known survivor of the school's incinerator stood there amongst them, demanding to tell the story. And I think I knew in that moment that should Julian decide to tell his own story, that it would be incredibly powerful. And I also felt in that moment that something else was at play,

that we were all brought here to serve something bigger than ourselves. Here's a question for you. What's your email address saying about your business? all brought here to serve something bigger than ourselves. Here's a question for you. What's your email address saying about your business? First impressions matter and your email says a lot. It's your customer's first look at your brand. A custom.ca email shows your credible, professional and local.

It's your business identity. Own it. Show you mean business from the get-go. Get your custom dot ca email now at yourcustomemail.ca and let your email do the talking. I'm Dena Temple-Reston, the host of the Click Here podcast from Record of Future News. Twice a week, we tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. And these days, our digital world is being overrun by hackers. I was just targeted by a nation state.

And they range from reflective. It's a crime, bro. And I live with that every day. To ruthless. Do you feel guilty about it? No, not really. Click here from Recorded Future News. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Julian, in doing this film, what did you learn about what survivors are looking for?

Julian Smedley I mean, the truth first and foremost, you know, I think that there's a huge conversation in this country about truth and reconciliation. And it's almost like we, you know, mumble the first word and then like rush to the second word. And you know, I think that part of what we're insisting with this film, there was a moment when Em and I were in Victoria at the archives where some of the records of St. Joseph's Mission and other institutions are kept. When Em turned to me late in the night after a day of shooting and said, if survivors of a genocide are owed anything, it's the truth.

I think that that is something that we have returned to throughout this film and the way that we've put it out into the world. There are still some fundamental historical facts and realities that endure to this day about the Indian residential schools that we don't know. I think that our documentary breaks new ground on a pattern of infanticide at one school, which I think begs the question or should about what happened at the 138 other schools across Canada and the 417 across the United States where there has been scant investigation and no real public reckoning.

This film should really be seen as an opening towards that commitment and recommitment to knowing and telling the truth. It's also an opening in terms of that relationship between you and your dad. And I just wonder what you learned about your father in doing this. These are, again, I've said this, but these are painful conversations,

but I felt in watching it that you were really lucky to be able to have those conversations as well. Yeah, you know, I moved back in with my dad at the age of 28 as a young, native bachelor to live across the hallway from a guy who I hadn't lived with since I was six or seven years old who still owed me money that I had lent him so that he'd come to my own high school graduation, which is all to say that me and my dad had some real history, have some real history. some real history and

You know I was able to have the opportunity to spend real time with him to reconnect with him in a deeper and more meaningful way To understand you know more of why he left and ultimately you know to come to love Someone in their full complexity, you know, my dad is an incredibly charismatic guy. He's a trickster in his own way. I think that people will see that if they watch Sugarcane. And at the same time, you know, like, they separated children from their parents for, you know, six generations in this country. And what happens, among other things, when you do that,

people like forget how to parent. You know, my dad wasn't really parented because his parents were taken away from their parents and on and on. And so at the same time as I still and will always carry the pain of him leaving, as my sister does as well, I can't really fully blame the guy,

because like he didn't know, he didn't know how to do it. This film had a screening at the White House, Emily, last year, what was that like? And this in part is picking up on what Julian was saying about telling the story in a way that hasn't been told to a different audience in some ways. When you're there at the White House, what was that like for you?

Well, it was an incredibly special moment. The screening was introduced by the only ever Indigenous cabinet secretary, former secretary of the interior, Deb Holland, who of course was the first to lead an inquiry on the boarding school system in the United States that had 417 federally funded schools. And she has forged a path that was concurrent with with sugar cane and so

it was really remarkable to be in a room with her and other leaders to show this film in a place that concocted the system where the story has never been told and so you know it felt like this incredibly full circle moment from you know filming you know people trying to survive on the res and friends passing away and telling the story of survivors to the highest levels of government with my incredible collaborator and survivors in that room. So we also brought it to Canadian Parliament. And I think most importantly, we brought it to indigenous communities across North America, from Sica, Alaska,

to Yellowknife in the Northwest territories, to Standing Rock in the Dakotas, so that other communities and families could begin to break open their own pain and start to move forward and heal. Julian, tell me a bit more about that and why you think this story has resonated with audiences, particularly in the United States, that perhaps have not heard of or talked enough

about this story before. Well, you know, I think that the power of film is that people can feel and see themselves often in it because of their ability to feel it. You know, I think that for so many Native people, you know, they see sugar cane and they see themselves in me or they see their cane and they see themselves in me, or they see their parents or their dad in my dad, or their grandparents in my grandmother.

I think that Rick Gilbert, the late chief, is an everyman for the ages. My own uncle actually said that to me. And at the same time, I think that there's a universality to this story at the end of the day, you don't have to be native to understand family trauma, to enjoy a road trip film, a Buddy Stoner comedy, arguably, or to understand a relationship between a father and a son that might be broken,

but that still has a lot of love in it. Can I ask you, this is a kind of a tricky question, Julian, but it's about the context that this film arrives in. At the same time that this film comes out and that these stories are being told, there are people in this country, people elsewhere, who question the atrocities of residential schools. They say there are no graves that have been found, there's a book that's a bestseller that claims that the history is false or at the very least exaggerated. What does something like that tell you? Well, it tells me that there's still a lot of work to do.

You know, I think that unfortunately it's hard for people to grapple with the reality that, you know, the government that they pay their taxes to, the church that they might attend, you know, committed grave injustices to Indigenous peoples. You know, I think that this is a form of denial that I would, you know, describe as being akin to Holocaust denial. You know, there are people out there in the world who, for various reasons, you know, struggle to, you know, come to terms with reality. Yeah I'll just add um living in in this community for three years there there is no one who is untouched by this right these are systems that were in the

words of its architect meant to get rid of the Indian problem in Canada and in the United States kill the Indian save the man like that was premise. And there is no one in this community who wasn't touched by this in a pretty dramatic way. You know, most people who we know attended the schools, at least at St. Joseph's Mission, were sexually abused by priests and not allowed to speak their language and beaten severely. So whether or not there are excavations and discoveries of graves, we know kids died at these schools. They died of suicide, they died of malnutrition and hunger, they died of running away and drowning. We have letters from the priests and death records confirming these things. And we have death records that say that they don't know

where the kid is buried. And so though we believe that the notion of unmarked graves is not the point, the point is that these kids were brutalized for over 150 years at these schools. And we have to start grappling with that if we want to be able to move forward. I have to let you go, but I have two quick things. One is, Julie, and you've hinted at this a couple of times, there's real beauty

and joy in this film as well, particularly at the powwow. And I think of the kids that are there. Why is it important to have that in a film like this? It's a direct refutation of what the Indian residential schools were built upon, the idea that native people were backwards and dirty and that our way of life deserved to die. And the way that we depict the Sekwetmukh way of life and all indigenous life in this film is exactly the opposite,

is a beautiful way that deserves to endure and that actually has deep humanity that we all should reconnect with in it. And a future as well in those young kids. Absolutely. The last thing is, are you ready for the glitz and the glamor of the Academy Awards, Julien? Yeah, I've kind of got most of my outfit picked out

and I think I'm preparing for people to ask me what I'm gonna be wearing on the red carpet to which I'm gonna answer my ancestors. Emily, what about for you? Yeah, I think I'm most excited to see Charlene and Ed and Willie and Jules on the red carpet. I think it says a lot about what this story means. And I think it's also really incredible to have a piece of art that we made together

and gave our hearts to to be recognized on this level. So it will be a really special night with our incredible creative team and our courageous participants. It's really something. I hope people watch this film, and I hope it does so well at the Academy Awards, but just the telling of the story and the way that you've told it is really powerful. Thank you both for speaking with us,

and congratulations again. Thanks, Matt. It's Jim Bennett. Julian Bravenoiskat is a writer and filmmaker. Emily Cassie is an investigative journalist and filmmaker, and their film, Sugarcane, is up for an Academy Award for best feature documentary. You can stream that film on Disney+.