Watchlist: ‘Sugarcane’

By Kamiah Koch

Social media/digital journalist

Smoke Signals Editor Danielle Harrison and Tribal member and Social Media/Digital Journalist Kamiah Koch saw the documentary “Sugarcane” during the Indigenous Media Conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on Thursday, July 25, before its official theater release in August.

“Sugarcane” is a National Geographic documentary investigating the deaths, sexual violence and lasting intergenerational trauma on Native children who were forced to go the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School on the Sugarcane Reserve in Canada.

After the early screening of the documentary, the filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie answered audience questions.

“I didn’t know the story of my father’s birth and connection to the Indian reservation school, but I knew it was very heavy,” NoiseCat said in response to someone’s question on why he decided to make the film.

From left, filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat, filmmaker Emily Kassie and moderator Connie Leanne Walker discuss audience questions after a screening of their new documentary “Sugarcane” in the First Americans Museum’s theater in Oklahoma City, Okla., during the Indigenous Media Conference on Thursday, July 25. (Photo by Kamiah Koch)

The official trailer for “Sugarcane” begins with researchers walking through an old dilapidated building on what once was the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School campus. Although the school no longer exists, the names of the Native children who were forced to go there are left behind with carvings in the wall.

“When you are brought up in an institution like the Catholic Church, you have strict rules and you went with their ethics,” a Tribal Elder said in a voiceover in the trailer.

The film parallels three storylines from Native children who survived St. Joseph’s Mission. Survivor Charlene Belleau is shown researching the mission’s records and scanning the grounds for the remains of reported missing and dead Native children.

Former Tribal Chief Rick Gilbert is shown as one of the residential school survivor delegates invited to meet Pope Francis in Vatican City in 2022. In the film he is shown grappling with the knowledge that his father was the Catholic priest assigned to St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School and that he was born out of sexual assault.

The last storyline is the personal journey of filmmaker Julian NoiseCat’s father, Ed NoiseCat, who was born in the mission while his mother was a student there and follows how it affected him as a father.

“Your story is someone who was abandoned, but also who abandoned,” Julian NoiseCat said in the trailer.

After the film, NoiseCat said the making of the film brought them closer together. He said it was the longest time they had spent together since he was a young child.

When asked how the film was made, Kassie explained it was mostly her with the camera. By keeping the film crew small, they could document the intimate moments of survivors retelling their trauma and healing from it.

The documentary is to be released in select theaters in August and will later be available for streaming on Disney+ and Hulu. Locally, the film will open at the Siff in Seattle, Wash on Friday, Aug. 23.

If you would like to watch the “Sugarcane” trailer, you can find it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CisI_WFPDOk.