- Beginning in the late 19th century, the Canadian government funded a network of residential schools for Indigenous children.

Today's guest recounts the horrors that took place in those schools, and puts a personal face on the victims who still suffer from the abuses they witnessed and endured.

He's Julian Brave NoiseCat, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(bright orchestral upbeat music) (bright orchestral upbeat music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Julian Brave NoiseCat, a former political activist turned documentary filmmaker, whose debut documentary, "Sugarcane," was nominated for an Academy Award.

He's also the author of a new book, "We Survived The Night."

He's joining us today from British Columbia.

Julian, welcome to the show.

- Tsecwinucw-kuc, good morning, or as it literally translates, "You all survived the night."

Thanks for having me.

- We're thrilled to have you here.

"Sugarcane" is a remarkable documentary, and we wanna acknowledge that your co-filmmaker on this was Emily Kassie, who's also an investigative journalist, we wanna acknowledge her work in this as well.

But "Sugarcane," again, it's a remarkable film.

Do you wanna tell us what led you though from being a political activist to documentary filmmaker?

Is there a through line there?

(Julian chuckles) - You know, writing has actually always been the thing that I've dreamt of doing, and filmmaking is something more that kind of found me and happened to me.

So, the reason that I started making "Sugarcane" was actually not my own, you know, driver or anything, it wasn't that I set out to become a filmmaker, and I definitely did not set out to tell such a heavy story and personal story about my family's connection to the residential schools.

But at my first reporting job, I sat next to a woman the same age as me, who grew up in Toronto, and was an investigative journalist and filmmaker, and it happened to be Emily Kassie.

And we became friends at our first job, that was over 10 years ago now.

And after the discovery of more than 200 potential unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in May of 2021, Em asked if I'd be open to collaborating with her on a documentary about the subject.

And because of my family's, you know, very intense connection to that history, I took some time to think about it, I wasn't sure if I wanted to make a documentary about that subject, I'd never made a documentary in my entire life.

And, eventually, I decided to say "Yes."

And, you know, the crazy thing about it is that when I said "Yes," Em said, "That's great.

I've identified a First Nation that's about to begin its own investigation, and that investigation is happening at Saint Joseph's Mission near Williams Lake, British Columbia."

And when she said that, as you might imagine, I was completely floored, because, of course, that's the school that my family was sent to and where, to the best of my knowledge, my father was born, and then, you know, found in the trash incinerator.

And, you know, what are the odds, right, that the person who I sat next to at my first reporting job, which was in the United States, in New York, would be a Canadian from Toronto, who would be a filmmaker, who'd wanna make her first film about this subject, that we'd be randomly sat next to each other, I wasn't even supposed to be in the New York newsroom actually that summer, and that of the 139 Indian residential schools across the country, she would happen to select the school my family was sent to to focus a documentary on.

So I think, to me, it's perhaps more than coincidence.

- So, Julian, you've given us a little flavor of what the film is about, but for the audience who has not seen "Sugarcane" yet, do you wanna give us a quick overview?

- Sure.

Well, firstly, I really hope people take the time to find it and watch it.

It's on National Geographic, which is part of Disney+ in the United States, you can also watch it on Hulu.

But the film follows an investigation that unfolded at the residential school my family was sent to, Saint Joseph's Mission near Williams Lake, British Columbia.

So rather than being like a traditional sit-down, talking-head kind of format documentary, you know, maybe like a Ken Burns documentary, or Ezra Edelman's work, it's a verite documentary, so it actually follows this investigation as it's unfolding in real-time, and then sort of the consequences and the reckoning that it engenders in the Sugarcane Indian Reserve and the surrounding Secwepemc community.

So it's really about our reckoning with this history of what we consider a genocide in Canada.

- And and when you say "residential schools," tell the audience what we're talking about in that context.

- Yeah, so in Canada, there were over 139 federally funded boarding schools that were segregated, that Native children were required to attend under provision of the Indian Act with threat of their parents being jailed, fined, et cetera.

So, virtually, all Indigenous children attended these schools, where the idea was to get rid of the Indian problem according to one of the architects of these schools.

And at the schools, there was immense abuse, you know, physical abuse, good amount of sexual abuse, and even in some instances, kids, children died, did not come home.

And while there has been a significant public discourse about this history in Canada, where there has been an ongoing process of what's called Truth and Reconciliation for the past 15 years, in the United States, where there were over 400 schools, in fact 417, so three times as many institutions, there has been no parallel reckoning with what is essentially the same history.

- So, Julian, the schools in Canada were run by the Catholic Church, and there were priests, brothers, and nuns who were responsible, who did the educating, and many of them committed abuse and really horrible acts.

Could you talk a little bit about the clergy and the people who ran these schools, what their motivations were, and how they went into such a horrible area?

- Well, I couldn't tell you what their motivations were, 'cause I'm not the... (chuckles) But, you know, so, firstly, the schools in Canada, the majority were run by the Catholic Church, but not all of them.

So, in Canada, there's this very interesting history of essentially a compromise, right, between English-speaking Canada and French-speaking Canada to keep the country a country, right?

Because anybody who's from the East Coast of the United States is probably familiar with the fact that the province above them, Quebec, speaks French, right, you go up to Montreal and they speak French.

And for the vast majority of Canadian history, there's been a significant movement in Quebec for sovereignty, you know, for this province to become its own state, its own country.

And, in part, because of that, there are a number of bicultural compromises in Canadian politics.

You know, if you go to Canada, even here in British Columbia where there are basically no French speakers, the road signs and everything are also in French.

And in the same way, one of the ways that Canada kept itself together was it allowed the Catholic Church, which is more a French institution I would say than an English one, of course, you know, folks familiar with the history of the Reformation, et cetera, would probably realize that the British are not Catholic often, was allowed to proselytize more of the natives, which I think is just like, as a baseline point, that's kind of a fascinating and really dark thing to think about, that this country was keeping itself together in part by allowing the Catholic Church, which had more French roots than English ones, to disproportionately colonize the Natives.

That one of the many resources that English and Catholic... Sorry, English and French speaking Canada were competing over, were Indian souls.

And so, I think as a baseline starting point, I think that that maybe helps you understand a little bit about how Native people were seen and understood, and, you know, in certain ways, perhaps not seen as fully human, you know, we're seen more as a resource, we're seen more as wards of the state, and that that positioning ultimately could justify immense harm and wrong.

And if you read any of the, you know, sort of archival documents from the clergymen who were sent to places like Saint Joseph's Mission, you know, part of what you will see is that they're also complaining about the fact that they've gotten sent to proselytize these Natives far off in Williams Lake, you know, where they maybe hoped to be going to the tropics.

(chuckles) And so, there was a deep amount of resentment, I would say, towards the Natives and towards being in these cold parts of Western Canada.

And, you know, on the margins, of course, in society, there's always room for, you know, abuse, and when the institution is one with as much cultural authority as the church has, and definitely had more in the past, you know, you can ultimately get away with a lot.

And so, this is a story, on the one hand, that is about, you know, the dehumanization of children, of an entire people, but it's also a story that is about the abuses of a powerful institution that has unfortunately perpetuated these kinds of harms all across the world.

- So abuse is sort of a general term.

What types of abuse are we talking about at these boarding schools?

- I mean, I said before, physical abuse, sexual abuse, you know, psychological abuse, all kinds of awful things happening to kids.

It's worth pointing out, for example, I mean, I don't really love talking in detail about these sorts of things, but Saint Joseph's Mission was the first school that had significant sexual abuse criminal cases actually brought against staff and members of the clergy, including, at the time, the highest ranking Catholic official ever charged with rape.

He was a guy named Father O'Connor, who rose to the rank of Bishop in the Archdiocese of Vancouver, who was tried in the '90s for rape multiple times.

And, ultimately, he was acquitted, because, essentially, his survivors were tired of coming to court and testifying.

And so, they dwindled, and ultimately what ended up happening, which is very interesting, is they held a healing ceremony for him and his victims in the First Nations community of Esk'etemc, which is one of the communities that had children sent to Saint Joseph's Mission, it also happens to be the community that I do my annual ceremonies in, because it's a very traditional community.

And so, they actually brought a measure of healing to their own people who had suffered this abuse, not through the court system that had failed them, but through our own traditional forms of justice, because, of course, before colonization happened, you know, our people maintained many systems to support our own societies, including systems to heal and to correct past wrongs and injustices.

- You know, Julian, one of the things, one of the hallmarks of the film is the sensitivity with which you treat the victims of these crimes, including your father.

And I wonder if you can talk to us about, you know, the decision, you mentioned it briefly already, but the decision to tell so personal, a family story on film.

- Well, you know, obviously, as I said, I did not set out to make this movie, so I also didn't set out to make a movie about myself and my father.

But when my co-director, Em, decided to focus the documentary unbeknownst to me on the school that my family happened to be sent to, and where my father was born, that obviously laid before me a set of very personal questions about how I was gonna go about telling, you know, this story and my own family's connection to it.

And so, the first thing I had chose to do was actually chose to move in with my dad, who I lived with for two years while we made "Sugarcane," and while I wrote my book, "We Survived The Night," which is coming out in October.

And, you know, living with somebody, you know, who I should say, me and my dad, I didn't grow up with the guy, he left when I was a young boy, and I saw him maybe about a dozen times, give or take, between the ages of six and 20, we were fairly estranged.

And so, all of a sudden, I was living across the hallway from this guy who was abandoned in the trash incinerator at Saint Joseph's Mission, and then went on to abandon his own children, and did not know this story, and, you know, him and I had our own history.

And because of that, I was in this position to, you know, help him find a measure of healing from this genocide of which he was a very real victim and very nearly died, and also to repair our relationship.

And, you know, long story short, I didn't immediately say like, "Let's film our reckoning with this," we actually were the last sort of subjects to have our story, you know, captured on camera.

But, ultimately, you know, witnessing the bravery of so many of the other subjects in the film, particularly the late Chief Rick Gilbert who traveled all the way, if you watch "Sugarcane," he travels all the way to the Vatican and confronts a representative of the Catholic order that abused him and four generations of his family with a truth that he carries in his own DNA.

This old man, in what ended up being, we didn't know it at the time, of course, the last year of his life, traveled all the way from Williams Lake, British Columbia, to the Vatican to confront these people with this truth.

When, after witnessing that, I felt like, "Man, like, this guy is not a director of this film, and he is giving us everything, and, you know, being incredibly brave.

And if he's willing to do this, and he doesn't get to control ultimately the way the film, you know, is put together, and here I am one of the directors, and I do get to choose how the film was put together, and I have this story that is in my own genealogy, that is my father's story, that is also my story.

You know, if I'm not willing to go there, then I'm not really doing this in the right way.

I'm not reciprocating the generosity of spirit, the bravery of Rick and so many others."

And so, ultimately, my dad and I decided to choose to tell that story on camera, although it was a very scary thing to do, because, of course, you never know how that thing's gonna be received, and how it's gonna impact, you know, your loved ones.

So we're just really, really grateful and lucky that it has been received in the way that it has been and that everybody has seen the intention and the love behind the choice to tell such a heavy, personal story, but, you know, in a way that hopefully brings healing to people and helps others understand, you know, what it really is to live with the legacy of being a people who were considered a problem and who therefore were supposed to die, if not biologically then definitely culturally.

- So during that trip to Rome, Rick also met with the Pope, and other survivors met with the Pope, it was the late Pope Francis.

Tell us about that.

- So we got access to follow a very limited portion of the visit of survivors of the residential schools to the Vatican, and the access that we got, we had to fight for.

And if you end up finding yourself all the way at the Vatican in a historic meeting between the survivors of what Canada considers a cultural genocide, and the church that, you know, was not the only perpetrator of that genocide, but ran the majority of the schools, you know, and you're a documentarian, you're gonna do everything you can to get the shots.

(all chuckling) So, you know, it's enough in the past now that I feel comfortable saying that my co-director, Em and I, she shoots I do not, did everything we possibly could to get the coverage we needed of this event, including Em ultimately, and I tried as well, I was not successful, we actually snuck into, Em did, snuck into the papal apology to the residential school survivors, and that's how we have that cell phone footage that you see in the apology to the residential school survivors.

And when you watch that apology in the film, I think you get a real sense for... This is interpretation, but, you know, this sort of emptiness to many in the gesture, because when the Catholic Church chose to apologize, they very specifically worded their apology as being for the wrongs committed by individual members of the clergy and, you know, staff at these schools.

So they did not take on any institutional responsibility for what happened at these schools, because, of course, institutional responsibility would then raise other questions about, you know, what might they owe to the survivors of these institutions.

And as Chief Rick Gilbert points out in the documentary, the Catholic Church has never paid its share for any of the settlements that have happened with survivors of these institutions, and continues to disavow any sort of institutional accountability when, you know, I think that the preponderance of evidence, not just in our documentary, but elsewhere, suggests that, you know, there are patterns of abusive priests being moved around, and that's not a unique thing to residential schools.

And there is also, in our documentary, specifically, our documentary is the first work in any medium to document what we describe as a pattern of infanticide at any of these schools, wherein babies were in some instances born to unwed mothers and placed in the school's incinerator, which is the case of my father.

And then in other instances were conceived by priests and hidden by the church through various means, either by being adopted out through the Catholic... Sorry, through the Children Aid Society, which was affiliated with the Catholic Church, or by, in the case of Rick Gilbert, his mom was married to a man with the last name of Gilbert to hide the fact that his biological father was a priest at Saint Joseph's Mission, which you learn through a DNA test and other evidence in "Sugarcane."

And beyond that, there's also eyewitness accounts and testimony suggesting that women were forced into abortions by the Catholic Church, or representatives of the Catholic Church.

And there's been no response at all to any of these findings in our documentary or by the Williams Lake First Nation.

And when we have shown this film to other First Nations and other investigators, you know, this is not the only place where this is at least rumored to have happened.

Other First Nations and survivors of institutions elsewhere have similar stories about things happening to young women, things happening to unwed mothers, and, you know, patterns of adoption, abortion, and infanticide, which echo, you know, behaviors that the Catholic Church has exhibited elsewhere in the world, including with the Magdalene laundries in Ireland, where I should say, you know, interestingly, "Sugarcane" was really well-received.

Of all the places, I mean, "Sugarcane" was well-received in many places, thankfully, but of all the places where this film has traveled, the only place where it got nothing but five-star reviews was in Ireland, and I think that that's in part because the abuses of the church there have a lot of resonance and similarity with the abuses of the church among First Nations people in Canada and Indigenous peoples around the world.

- Yeah.

Julian, that scene with Chief Rick Gilbert, where he reminds the clergy member that the Bible says, "It's not enough to apologize, you also have to change behaviors," I wonder now, you know, here we are in 2025, societally, I think you've said something about institutionally, but societally, have we changed behaviors enough given the severity of these crimes?

And maybe we need to divide this between the Canadian response and the American response, or maybe they're one and the same.

I'm just curious where you see societally where we are today.

- While we were traveling around with the film, everywhere we went, by the way, with this film, it was always women.

It was always Indigenous women who were receiving us and bringing us into their community.

We got to take this film on what we called our Rez Tour.

So we brought the film to over 20 different Indigenous communities, across Canada, the United States, and around the world as part of this effort to make the film available to the people who really deserve a need to see it, you know, the Indigenous peoples who survived institutions just like this one.

And everywhere we went, it was women who were organizing these screenings, because I think so often, you know, I don't wanna speak for every community, but in the Native world, so often it is women who are, you know, really the leaders on so many of these subjects involving the pain that our people experience, colonization, the abuse that continues to this day because of it, and, you know, the need to heal from it.

And one of those women pointed out that... Or actually I just think raised a question, I would describe it that way, that has stuck with me since, which is, you know, "What would it look like to invest the same amount of resources into maintaining these languages, these cultures, these ways of life, these communities, these family structures, as was invested into tearing them apart, into destroying them?"

And despite, you know, a significant amount of discourse about this history here in Canada, despite, you know, a process of truth reconciliation that has gone on for 15 years here, even in Canada where I'd say that, you know, this conversation is probably the most advanced of anywhere it is in the world, I don't think that we've ever really seen actually what it would look like societally to invest in the very languages, cultures, ways of life that are indigenous, and that were torn apart by these institutions.

And so, that is actually still a premise, or a vision I would say, from which I try to imagine the world and to operate, because, you know, for example, the language that my people speak, Secwepemctsin, my kwiye and her sister are the only two remaining fluent speakers on our reserve.

And if they pass, or when they die, unless, you know, we get some new fluent speakers very soon, which is a very hard thing to do, that language is gonna be essentially dormant.

I mean, people will use it, you know, in passing and stuff, but that language is gonna no longer be alive in our community.

And that's a direct result of this history, they were both sent to those schools.

My dad's generation did not grow up with this language, because their parents were beaten for speaking it.

- So, Julian, we have less than a minute left, so just talk about the investigators.

They had incredible access to records, to vintage photographs and films, and we see a lot of that in the film.

How did they get that access?

- About 30 seconds, Julian.

- So Charlene Belleau, my auntie who's in the film, she has been leading on this history for over 30 years, involved in many investigations, has developed many connections in those years, including to the RCMP.

And so, she was able, through her connections, and as one of the lead investigators from the Williams Lake First Nation to secure access to RCMP documents that otherwise we would not have been able to access.

At the same time, you know, it's worth pointing out that the Catholic Church still has a great deal of documents and archival materials related to these schools, and does not release all of that material yet.

And so, while we were able to access a lot more than previous investigations and film teams, there's still I think a lot left to be learned about this foundational chapter in North American history.

- Julian Brave NoiseCat, the film is "Sugarcane" and the book is "We Survived The Night."

Thank you so much for sharing some of that work with us today.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about the show, you can find us on social media, or visit salve.edu/pellcenter, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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