In 2021, unmarked graves of Native children were discovered at St. Joseph’s Mission, a now abandoned Catholic Church-run residential school on the Sugarcane Reserve in British Columbia. That prompted an investigation by the Williams Lake First Nation to unearth what happened not only to those buried on the hillside near the school but those who survived decades of abuse at the hands of the priests and nuns who ran the school where kids from the nearby reservation were forced to go.
“Sugarcane” is a documentary that looks at the investigation, and the efforts to bring some healing to the survivors and their families, which becomes intimately personal for one of the co-directors, Julian Brave NoiseCat. Recruited to join her in directing by journalist and filmmaker Emily Kassie, NoiseCat, as we learn instantly, is directly tied to St. Joseph’s.
His father, Ed, a woodworker who lives in isolation, was born there and continues to be traumatized by missing years in his early life story. Julian’s grandmother is torn up by the past as well and refuses to talk about what happened some 50 years ago and why. The NoiseCat family is just one part of the multi-level film that follows the investigation, which utilizes ground-penetrating radar to find the graves and dedicated researchers to comb through government and school documents and newspaper accounts to map with strings, photos and clippings the clergy and decades of abuse and worse at the school.
And it follows one survivor.