Sugarcane‘s co-director and documentary subject Julian Brave Noisecat asks his grandmother what the Secwepemec word for ‘picture’ is. I can already relate to this conversation but I lost my language organically, unlike the people of the Sugarcane reserve. The colonial government in Turtle Island forced the Secwepemec or Shushwap people into residential schools with Eurocentric curriculum. The cultural and physical genocide that took place in such schools are something that American Indigenous people still deal with. Some of these conversations have formal, large scopes, like ones that Chief Willie Sellars is trying to organise.

Some conversations are smaller, like the ones that Noisecat has with his father Ed Archie and the latter’s bully. Again, there’s a familiarity I feel even if I went to a settler Catholic school where alumni bond over abuse. Conversations snowball into acts of discovery, like Noisecat’s grandmother remembering a close traumatic moment that made newspaper headlines. All these discoveries lead to a backlash against the Church which makes some elder members in the community feel ambivalent. One of these elders is former Chief Rick Gilbert, a Christian who survived abuse while staying at the residential school.

There are a few scenes in this documentary depicting meetings of what happened at nearby St. Joseph’s Residential School. Both Chief Sellars and former Chief Gilbert preside over such conferences that residential school and Sixties Scoop survivors attend. In Sugarcane, Chief Sellars remind the media of the decades of neglect that Indigenous children faced in residential schools. Projectors display the conference for people who can’t attend in person but have stories that they hope get recognition. A stray thought – how can someone name a school after a saint and use that institution to abuse children?

St. Joseph’s alumni have painful memories that, as adults, they bring up when they have small reunions that feel  intimate. Noisecat and his co-director Emily Kassie capture interactions that Edward Archie has even with a fellow student who abused him. “I know your story,” that former bully says, showing that this interaction is different than one we may expect. There’s more polish to Sugarcane that we don’t see in other docs but there’s moments that feel more direct. Their unvarnished approach adds a genuine effect to these interactions, showing mutual empathy these men feel towards each other.

Kassie and Noisecat’s personal approach puts a lot of perspective towards a series of atrocities against the Indigenous. Decades after the last residential school closed, the RCMP is opening up their files to those investigating the aforementioned anti-Indigenous atrocities. The media archives showing events that happen to Indigenous individuals are also open, pieces of a larger, complex puzzle. In those clippings, Indigenous children are victims, the pieces blaming the parents for the bad things happening to them. Sugarcane, through its sensitive portraiture, sheds a new light on those past events, showing them within a breakable cycle.

T’karonto cinephiles can watch Sugarcane at TIFF Lightbox, and it’s also available to watch in select theatres all over Turtle Island.