'Sugarcane' documentary spotlights Indigenous resilience amid dark residential school history

HOUSTON, Texas -- The award-winning documentary "Sugarcane" is coming to Hulu and Disney+ and tells the horrific history of Indigenous residential schools and the lasting impacts it's left on survivors, their families, and the community.

Filmed mostly in Sugarcane, British Columbia, on the Williams Lake Indian Reserve, Julian Brave NoiseCat traces the disturbing history of residential schools that removed thousands of Indigenous children from their families, placing them in government-sanctioned schools, which aimed to strip them of their culture and assimilate them into Western society.

"This is one of the foundational stories of North America," NoiseCat told ABC 13. "This is what happened to First peoples."

The issue is close to NoiseCat, who is a member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen and a descendant of the Lil'Wat Nation of Mount Currie.

His father, Ed, is heavily featured in the film as they work to heal from the trauma experienced at St. Joseph's Mission, a school that operated on the Williams Lake First Nation reserve from 1886 to 1981.

Discussions of intergenerational trauma are front and center throughout the documentary.

"This is how the governments that inherited this land attempted to separate us from our cultures and to separate us from our land," he said.

According to the University of Manitoba's National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, for more than 150 years, approximately 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools, where their hair was cut and they were forbidden to speak their language.

In the United States, a similar system existed called "boarding schools," where thousands of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children were also forcefully separated from families. The schools were operational between 1819 through the 1970s, according to the Department of Interior, which launched an investigation into the schools in 2021.

Survivors of the schools in both countries say they endured awful conditions and were subjected to emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. In some cases, students died.

NoiseCat collaborated with co-director and fellow journalist Emily Kassie for the film that took two years to shoot. They met while working as journalists at a previous job.

Kassie became interested in covering the issue in 2021 after hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered at the grounds of former schools in Canada.

"I was horrified, like so many were, and got pulled to the story," Kassie said. "I felt like this was the place in the world that I needed to be."

Kassie began looking for locations where more searches for human remains were being conducted and made a connection at Williams Lake Indian Reserve. She reached out to NoiseCat to propose the idea of teaming up to document the work happening at St. Joseph's Mission.

"When she said that, as you might imagine, I was shocked because that's the school my family was sent to and where, to the best of my knowledge, my father was born," he said.

Throughout the film, graphic and horrifying stories of sexual and physical abuse are shared by former students and survivors of the school.

Viewers also see the frustrating and endless pursuit for justice and accountability.

"There's some heavy pieces, but it's important to understand it's not just a heavy film because of course, the way we have survived is not through trauma and pain, but through love and deep human connection," he said.

"Sugarcane" will premiere on National Geographic on Monday, Dec. 9, at 8 p.m. and stream the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.

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