'Sugarcane' exposes horrifying abuse of Native children in Canadian schools

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: An investigation at an Indian residential school in Canada is the focus of the documentary “Sugarcane,” named after a native reservation in British Colombia. The film is up for an Academy Award and has already made history. It’s the first time an indigenous director from North America has been nominated for an Oscar.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown spoke to the filmmakers for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Woman: I have felt dirty as Indian all my life in residential school.

Jeffrey Brown: Sugarcane tells a horrific history, the abuse of several generations of Native children at St. Joseph’s Mission in British Colombia, in a deeply personal way, through individuals who experienced it and family members who’ve lived with the consequences.

One of the latter, co-director Julian Brave Noisecat.

Julian Brave Noisecat, Director: Despite the fact that my own family attended St. Joseph’s Mission and survived the Indian residential schools, I actually knew very little about their experiences at them, in part because it was not something that we talked about.

I think that the memories, in particular, for my grandmother, who attended St. Joseph’s Mission, she really didn’t speak about what happened at that school. So this film was, in part, an act of self-discovery for myself and even more so for my father, who was born at that school in circumstances that we didn’t really know about until we went about investigating that story through this documentary.

Jeffrey Brown: NoiseCat’s directing partner is filmmaker and journalist Emily Kassie.

Emily Kassie, Director: This is the origin story of North America, how the land was taken, how six generations of indigenous children were separated from their families and forced into these assimilationist schools.

And this film is a story of the past, but it’s also a story of the president. Native communities across North America are still suffering from the highest rates of suicide, addictions and cycles of violence as a direct result of these schools.

Jeffrey Brown: St. Joseph’s Mission was just one of 139 Canadian residential schools, most run by the Catholic Church, that operated officially from the 1880s until the 1990s.

Like boarding schools in the U.S., they separated Native Americans from their own families and cultures in an attempt to — quote — “get rid” of the Indian problem.

Emily Kassie: They lost the right to parent their own kids. They lost the right to speak their own languages and practice their own culture. And so it was very important for us to tell a story of the living, of what it was to carry forward this trauma and this pain as these secrets begin to be unearthed and excavated.

Jeffrey Brown: Across Canada, an estimated 150,000 students attended these schools. Widespread abuse has been documented. The numbers of children who died from disease, neglect and violence or by suicide continue to be tallied, but are in the thousands.

The film tells of sexual abuse by priests, babies born to Native children, and, in some cases, infanticide.

Woman: So all of those principles were involved in some way with the disappearance, with the death, with the babies being born.

Julian Brave Noisecat: The greater story here is not just one of cultural genocide, but it’s actually one of a people who, despite over a century of government effort to annihilate our culture, to separate us from our families and our identities, remain connected to the places we come from, connected to our families and remain connected to our traditions and ways of being.

Jeffrey Brown: Capturing this on film meant embedding themselves in this community over the course of 2.5 years.

This is something that’s been covered or looked at in government investigations. It’s been covered on the news, including on our program. When you tackle it as a documentary filmmaker, what does that allow you to do? What new does that bring to this?

Emily Kassie: We wanted to make a film that prioritized emotional truth at the same time that it uncovered journalistic truth, what it was to live with this pain, and to say that Native people are worthy of epic storytelling, are worthy of the big screen.

And the cinematic language that we created around “Sugarcane” allows you to immerse yourself in this world, really live alongside our characters.

Jeffrey Brown: In one harrowing scene, survivors recount what happened when they did try to report abuses.

Woman: I went to the nun. She told me to tell the priest. I told the priest. He told me to tell the Indian agent. I told the Indian agent, who told me to tell the RCMP. I told the RCMP. He told my dad. And my dad beat the (expletive deleted) out of me.

That’s when I said, OK, I bought a bottle of wine and I got drunk.

Jeffrey Brown: The secrets that people have kept for decades, including those of NoiseCat’s father and grandmother, are part of the generational trauma the film captures.

Man: I didn’t leave you, son.

Julian Brave Noisecat: Yes, you did.

Man: What was I supposed to do?

Julian Brave Noisecat: I had to move in with my dad for two years to work on this film. And we had enough time and we developed deep enough relationships that you actually get to see real people grapple with a very deep and terrible history here, overcome it, and to change through the course of the film. And I think that that in nonfiction is quite rare.

Jeffrey Brown: Also notable, the stylistic choices they made, no formal interviews, scenes playing out almost like a dramatic feature.

Emily Kassie: Meant picking up Chief Willie Sellars’ kids from hockey practice and spending nights watching “American Idol” with Rick Gilbert. We decided to shoot on prime lenses, which meant we couldn’t zoom, which meant we had to move our bodies to be that close, which, yes, required just a lot of trust built over time.

Man: Being sorry for something is just the first step. You have to take action.

Jeffrey Brown: The film references apologies by both the church and the Canadian government. But, in recent years, efforts to right the wrongs of the boarding school have faced backlash. If Canada’s Conservative Party wins this year’s election, there are fears funding to further investigate the atrocities will be cut.

Julian Brave Noisecat: Our film, I think, should be seen as the beginning of correcting the historical record. And I think it’s unfortunately going to go down as sort of a moment where we just started discovering more about what happened at these schools, and then, for political reasons, our society has moved on from correcting the record.

Jeffrey Brown: “Sugarcane” is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.