MOVIE OF THE WEEK: August 9, 2024: SUGARCANE
The power of memory and the lasting impact of trauma are at the heart of Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat’s harrowing documentary Sugarcane. As it follows the investigation into nearly a century of abuse inside a Canadian Indian residential school, the film makes it clear how important it is to face the truth — as painful as it might be — head on so that you can shine a light on it and, hopefully, move toward justice.
Fueled by the racist, colonialist belief that Indigenous people should assimilate into White culture, Canadian officials and Catholic Church leaders forced thousands of Canada’s First Nation children to attend institutions like St. Joseph’s Mission School. Located near Williams Lake in British Columbia, St. Joseph’s operated between 1896 and 1981, and in that time, countless children were emotionally, physically, and sexually abused. Far too many died or disappeared, and the investigation, which began in 2021, suggests that at least some are buried in unmarked graves.
As Kassie and NoiseCat chronicle the investigators’ dogged progress, they also hone in on a few personal stories, including that of NoiseCat’s father, Ed Archie NoiseCat, who was born at St. Joseph’s (the circumstances of his birth are tragic). Many of the members of the Williams Lake First Nation community (also known as T’exelc, which translates to “sugar cane”) who had firsthand experiences at the school are reluctant to talk about what they and their fellow students went through, the trauma of their childhood still extraordinarily painful. But their recollections, no matter how soft-spoken or halting, are crucial in revealing what happened at the school.
Sugarcane isn’t an easy movie to watch — there are difficult confrontations, heartbreaking discoveries (specifically, the children’s names carved into the beams of an old school building), and angry exchanges. But in pursuing and exposing the full truth of the abuse that was carried out by the very people who should have been fighting to protect the First Nations children from harm, Kassie and NoiseCat produce exactly the kind of high-impact filmmaking that can truly make a difference. — Betsy Bozdech
Team #MOTW’s comments:
Pam Grady: The winner of the US documentary directing award at Sundance, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emilie Kassie’s exploration into official abuse and generational trauma stands as an indictment of a historical injustice. Scores of indigenous children suffered at the hands of a government that would break family ties and attempt to erase native identities by removing kids from their homes and placing them in abusive residential boarding schools. St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School near Canada’s Sugarcane reservation is the main focus of the documentary as the filmmakers track the ongoing investigation into the school that operated between 1891 and 1981, and the horrors inflicted there. Among those spearheading the investigation is Charlene Belleau, a survivor, and NoiseCat and Kassie zero in on her story and those of others who escaped the school with their lives and their identities but have spent a lifetime dealing with the trauma. Most poignant of all are interactions between NoiseCat and his father, Ed, a survivor whose experiences back then reverberate still in his own life and that of his son.
Loren King Mixing a gutting grassroots investigation with personal and collective reckoning of heinous crimes committed by Catholic priests at St. Joseph’s Mission Indian residential school in British Columbia, Sugarcane is unforgettable storytelling and a compassionate testament to resiliency. Sugarcane is layered with voices of the survivors and the silenced. Like last year’s powerful and poetic documentary Lakota Nation vs. the United States which exposed and countered history’s lies, it is at once a reckoning and a plea for reconciliation. Read full review.
Nell Minow: This devastatingly heartbreaking story is told with sensitivity to the trauma and culture of the people involved. The member of the younger generation literally and metaphorically has to learn the language of the people who were horrifically abused by the government and the church who tried to wipe them out as they were imposing the most violent physical and sexual abuse. The documentary lets the subjects tell their own stories, often placing them in the natural world that is their source of strength and history.
Leslie Combemale Sugarcane, as a documentary, is really about viewers bearing witness and holding space, as families shown in the film who have generational trauma work through their experiences of abuse at the residential schools. There is a meditative quality, from the camera work, to the space the filmmakers make for these very personal and painful stories, to the music that follows these very difficult revelations. Archival footage woven in between interviews and voiceovers gives a terrible tangible truth to these accounts of abuses. This is a film everyone should see, regardless of their backgrounds, to be reminded of the horrors that were and can still be perpetrated against the Indigenous of our lands, and the importance of justice and protection for Indigenous folks everywhere.
Jennifer Merin Sugarcane is a hard-hitting documentary about the abuse of Indigenous children at the St Joseph’s Residential Mission School in Williams Lake, British Columbia. Run by the Catholic Church from 1891 to 1991, the school housed children whom government officials removed from families that were dwelling in some 40 native communities. The objective was to teach the children to abandon their own culture and language and to indoctrinate them to behave and think like White people. Unfortunately and unforgivably, that indoctrination often entailed unacceptably cruel punishments like isolation, brutal beatings, sexual abuse and, even, infanticide. The children had absolutely no recourse and the suffering they endured at the hands of the government’s rigid bureaucrats and the mission’s twisted prelates has lasted until today. Read full review.
Sandie Angulo Chen: Sugarcane is a tale of survival. It chronicles the horrifying stories of Indigenous children who were abused at St. Joseph’s Residential Mission School in Williams Lake, British Columbia. Filmmakers Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat sensitively capture the brutal realities these elderly tribe members were subjected to when they were children, including corporal punishment, physical, and sexual abuse. By no means an easy documentary to watch, it is a necessary reminder of the systemic discrimination and cultural genocide perpetrated against Canada’s First Nations.
Nikki Fowler: Directors Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat chronicle an investigation into a Canadian, Catholic run, Indigenous boarding school of ‘horror’ and those affected by the suffering, murder and abuse inflicted on young innocent children who were being held there against their will under racist conditions. Taken from their homes in an attempt to convert them to a white ideology, the young children were stripped from their cultural identity. The filmmakers follow the investigation specifically into the lives lost at St Joseph’s Residential Mission School in Williams Lake, British Columbia from 1891 to 1991 as they search to uncover burial sites where the victims of infanticide were disposed of. Read full review.
Liz Whittemore Filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie delve into the long enduring multigenerational trauma of the Indigenous population caused by their abusive experiences at residential schools. Their compelling documentary, Sugarcane, is here to educate the masses by exposing the unspeakable atrocities perpetuated by the government and the Catholic Church across four generations. Sugarcane gives a voice to survivors and to those who are no longer here to tell their stories. Noisecat and Kessie’s documentary presents a lesson that should be mandatory for every classroom. Read full review.
Cate Marquis Heartbreaking and eye-opening, directors Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat take an in-depth and personal look at Indian schools. In the U.S. and Canada, there was a long history of missing Indigenous children and abusive treatment at these government-funded boarding schools, often run by the Catholic Church. Sugarland specifically focuses on the St Joseph’s Residential Mission School in Williams Lake, British Columbia, which was operated by the Catholic Church from 1891 to 1981. An investigation by Indigenous people, based in the nearby Sugarcane Reserve, seeks to uncover long hidden truths. They interview survivors and people born to students at the school, including co-director Julian’s own father, as well as delving into archives and using modern investigative tools like ground-penetration radar and DNA, to uncover a trail of abuses going back generations. What they find is shocking – physical, mental and sexual abuse, children fathered by priests, and even infanticide, as they seek accountability and a reckoning. The documentary can be hard to watch but it tells a story that must be exposed, told in an emotionally powerful, visually dynamic way.
FILM DETAILS:
Title: Sugarcane
Directors: Emilie Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat
Release Date: August 9, 2024
Running Time: 107 minutes
Language: English
Screenwriters: Documentary
Distribution Company: National Geographic
AWFJ Movie of the Week Panel Members: Sandie Angulo Chen, Betsy Bozdech, Leslie Combemale, Nikki Fowler, Pam Grady, Loren King, Cate Marquis, Jennifer Merin, Nell Minow, Sherin Nicole, Liz Whittemore
Other Movies Opening This Week
Edited by Jennifer Merin
