Moira Macdonald | (TNS) The Seattle Times SEATTLE — Growing up, spending time on the Canim Lake Band (Tsq̓éscen̓ First Nation) reserve with his extended family in British Columbia, Julian Brave NoiseCat would hear stories. They were horrifying, unspeakable stories about what happened to babies at St. Joseph’s Mission in Williams Lake, B.
C., one of many residential schools that North American governments once forced Native children to attend for purposes of assimilation. “I honestly dismissed those stories as sort of rez legends,” NoiseCat said, in a Zoom interview in mid-August.
“It sounded too grisly to be true.” He learned much later that “not only were those stories true,” but he believes his father to be the only known survivor of a pattern of infanticide at the school. Their story is part of a history of abuse, at St.
Joseph’s and numerous other Native boarding schools. NoiseCat, a writer, filmmaker and Salish historian who now lives in Bremerton, made a film with co-director Emily Kassie about those true stories. The documentary “Sugarcane” poignantly grapples with the hellish legacy of St.
Joseph’s — and the recent discovery, in 2021, of evidence of unmarked graves around the school. The film is the winner of a special jury prize at SIFF last spring and multiple awards at other film festivals. There were once hundreds of boarding schools for Native children in North America, housing thousands of children taken from their homes beginning in.