cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/32822426

The discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at an Indian residential school in Canada in 2021 was just the catalyst for “Sugarcane.”

Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, the filmmakers behind the Oscar-nominated documentary, spent years investigating the truth behind just one of the institutions. “Sugarcane,” now streaming on Hulu, paints a horrifying picture of the systemic abuses inflicted by the state-funded school and exposes for the first time a pattern of infanticide and babies born to Indigenous girls and fathered by priests.

While (NoiseCat) was mulling (Kassie’s offer to make the documentary together), she went looking for a group to focus on and landed on St. Joseph’s Mission near the Sugarcane Reservation of Williams Lake in British Columbia. Unbeknownst to her, that was the school NoiseCat’s family attended. He’d heard stories about his father being born nearby and found in a dumpster. Over the course of making the film they’d discover that he was actually born in a dormitory and found in the school’s incinerator.