It’s impossible to overstate the trauma that is explored throughout Sugarcane, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s harrowing documentary on the sins of St. Joseph’s Mission in British Columbia and the Canadian Indian residential school system as a whole. Spurred by the discovery of over 200 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in May 2021, NoiseCat and Kassie speak with investigators and survivors of the schools, one of them Julian Brave NoiseCat’s own father: Ed Archie NoiseCat.
Since the the 19th century, the Canadian government forced Indigenous children to attend boarding schools that were primarily run by the Catholic Church. If the pronounced goal was something like cultural acclimation/assimilation, the price many kids paid was too great to calculate. Widespread allegations of abuse, rape, and torture were largely ignored for generations. Rosalin Sam, a survivor of St. Joseph’s Mission, recounts the circular direction of denied responsibility.
Since the the 19th century, the Canadian government forced Indigenous children to attend boarding schools that were primarily run by the Catholic Church. If the pronounced goal was something like cultural acclimation/assimilation, the price many kids paid was too great to calculate. Widespread allegations of abuse, rape, and torture were largely ignored for generations. Rosalin Sam, a survivor of St. Joseph’s Mission, recounts the circular direction of denied responsibility.
- 1/21/2024
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
“Sugarcane,” the documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this week, is billed as “an investigation,” but its silences speak louder than its revelations.
The film from directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie is a stunning and brutal look at the lasting trauma of the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, a government-funded institution run by the Catholic Church where indigenous children were sent with the aim of stripping them of the connection to their culture. The abuses that took place at St. Joseph’s and the places around North America like it were innumerable — though much of the evidence of wrongdoing is, devastatingly, lost to time. But as NoiseCat and Kassie’s film shows, the legacy of harm has echoed throughout generations as the survivors reckon with what they saw and endured, keeping some of their experiences, too painful to fully grasp, buried.
NoiseCat and Kassie follow...
The film from directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie is a stunning and brutal look at the lasting trauma of the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, a government-funded institution run by the Catholic Church where indigenous children were sent with the aim of stripping them of the connection to their culture. The abuses that took place at St. Joseph’s and the places around North America like it were innumerable — though much of the evidence of wrongdoing is, devastatingly, lost to time. But as NoiseCat and Kassie’s film shows, the legacy of harm has echoed throughout generations as the survivors reckon with what they saw and endured, keeping some of their experiences, too painful to fully grasp, buried.
NoiseCat and Kassie follow...
- 1/21/2024
- by Esther Zuckerman
- Indiewire
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