Sugarcane – Uncovering and Overcoming Abuse

In 2021, the discovery of unmarked graves at a Catholic-run Indian residential school in Canada unearthed long-suppressed truths about the forced separation, assimilation, and abuse inflicted on Indigenous children in these institutions. The revelation ignited national reckoning with a system designed to erase Indigenous cultures. This “solution” initiated to deal with “the Indian problem” dates from 1831 when the first Canadian Indian residential school was opened, a practice that saw over 150,000 children placed in 139 schools. The first Native American U.S. Secretary of The Interior Deb Haaland spearheaded an investigation of over 400 residential schools in the U.S. where the practice was even more commonplace.

Sugarcane, co-directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, is at once cinematic and intimate, documenting victims of the residential schools uncovering abuse and recovering from its trauma. In the award winning film, we see survivors drawing strength from the Williams Lake First Nation’s heritage through ceremony, the sharing of stories and community. Now streaming on Hulu, nowhere in this film is the journey from a dark past to a brighter future more in evidence than in the family story of Julian Brave NoiseCat, the film’s director, who unexpectedly becomes a central figure of the narrative; although at first with some reluctance. “I didn’t set out to make a documentary about myself and my family when Emily reached out to me to collaborate. My family, like many other Indigenous families, has an intimate and painful connection to the residential schools,” Julian said.”We don’t talk about it.”

Julian’s co-worker at The Huffington Post, Emily discovered the Williams Lake First Nation in British Columbia had begun investigating the St. Joseph’s Mission Indian residential school. She contacted Chief Willie Sellars, who noted the timing was perfect, as they had just decided to document their search. When Emily told Julian it was the St. Joseph’s School Julian said, “That’s crazy,” I said. “My family was sent there and it is where my father was born… and abandoned. “She chose to pursue the investigation before we could talk or I had committed to the project. Later, I was pulled into the narrative by my aunt, Charlene  Belleau, who brought me to the barns in the first week of filming and performed a ceremony that you see in the film.” 

It is the barn scene where the aging but indefatigable Charlene climbs a rickety ladder with Julian into a barn where she and other children inscribed their numbers into the barn walls, much like prisoners with no names. Charlene, overcome by emotion tearfully describes the horrific punishment she witnessed there during the ceremony; thanking Julian for “bearing witness to a time in history, where our people are going to stand up and you’re going to make sure that the people are held accountable for everything they’ve done to us.” During the scene in the barn ceremony we see Julian tear up and transform. A son of victims of this tragedy, he feels the weight of the task he has been entrusted with. Later in the movie he will open a door to his own family’s past, as he hears and makes confessions as they attempt to heal their own wounds.

Continuing her crusade to uncover hidden and harsh truths, we see Charlene teaming with another investigator in the movie Whitney Spearing, Charlene employs everything from archival newspapers, cassettes to the most advanced handheld ground penetrating radar to uncover the perpetrator’s victims and evidence of their abuse. We also see flashbacks of Charlene who has been fighting this battle for years to help her community and others heal and for her efforts was awarded Canada’s Meritorious Service Cross. The directors also skillfully blend in archival footage of the children at the locations which they now explore, accenting the innocence and defenselessness of those who were victimized. In one scene Charlene asks an elderly group of the school’s survivors if they remember the names of the priests at the school. They go around the room until one woman, Rosalin Sam, choking on emotion names Price, the priest who abused her. Despite telling her family, school officials and even the RCMP. “Nobody would believe me. I got drunk. I was an alcoholic after that.” She is finally granted the response she deserves as the gathered survivors are moved to tears upon hearing her story. 

The uncovering of the abuse prompts a visit to the reservation by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who issued an apology along with a call to engage with the tribe’s history. Earlier in 2017 Trudeau’s request to the Catholic church for  Pope Francis to issue an apology for the treatment of children at the Indian Residential Schools was denied. In spite of this and his failing health, Chief Rick Gilbert’s courageously makes the long journey to the Vatican to seek an apology from the Pope himself. A progeny of an abused Indian mother, we see Rick Gilbert, a keeper of the Catholic faith finally receive an apology from Pope Francis for the behavior of the priests at the residential school. But perhaps a more powerful moment is when Rick Gilbert speaks to Louis Lougen, Superior General of the Missionary Oblates,the order that ran St.Josephs. Gilbert describes how four generations of his family were traumatized at St. Josephs, with no consequences for the abuser. Lougen apologizes for the church’s practice of moving not removing the offending priests. Gilbert points out that even in the bible “Saying your sorry for something is just the first step. You have to take action. We have heard apologies but nothing has happened.”

Sugarcane toward the end does offer an uplifting surprise, the building of a bond between Julian and his father Ed Archie NoiseCat. But I warn you it is hard won. Emily Kassie explains,  “It was really remarkable to watch this father and son be so vulnerable with each other and build back a relationship; that had been so broken intergenerationally because of these schools. To watch them reckon with that in real time was, for me, incredibly inspiring.” This unwinding of the tangled relationship between Julian and his father Ed Archie NoiseCat typifies how abuse can stifle the love from mother to son and from son to grandson. Rejection, isolation and alcohol abuse becomes solutions for truths too traumatic to share. We discover Ed Archie NoiseCat is the sole survivor of the incinerator at St. Josephs. His mother’s shame from the abuse from the priest and the resulting pregnancy is finally voiced in the presence of father and son. And in the end we do see them bond and start upon the road to a happier and better relationship.

Julian pointed out that although the camera is a powerful tool, it has historically been used in cinema, especially documentaries, to often portray Indigenous peoples in problematic ways. “There’s another possibility that the camera can empower, can tell people that they have agency, that their stories matter,” Julian explained. “And, the linchpin in that is, not the camera itself, it’s who’s behind the camera. I think that obviously, having an indigenous person from this community impacted by this story was helpful. But I didn’t shoot the film and there were entire scenes of the film that I wasn’t present for. That has to do with the relationship of Em (Emily Kassie) and our director of photography, Christopher LaMarca.

There should be an award for those who exposed their heart and soul to the camera in Sugarcane. Perhaps their award is a chance to heal and deliver a powerful message that will prevent this kind of atrocity from ever happening again.