Sugarcane
Systemic abuse is exposed in a documentary focusing on the young indigenous victims at Catholic institutions in Canada.
Image courtesy of Dogwoof Releasing.
When it comes to assessing this documentary made jointly by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie there are two ways of looking at it and they lead to different evaluations. The more positive reaction comes from considering the value of what the filmmakers have put on screen and for many viewers that will be what really matters. Sugarcane is to be applauded for bringing to wider attention an example of the appalling history of abuse that has existed in many Catholic schools. In this connection a written statement cites as many as 139 state supported institutions in Canada and 408 in the USA with the last closure having taken place as recently as 1997.
Comparable histories have been featured in other documentaries including Margo Harkin’s Stolen (2023) which concentrated on incidents in Ireland and Alex Gibney’s wide-ranging accusatory work Mia Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012). Yet Sugarcane brings something new to the subject as treated on screen in that it is concerned with victims who were indigenous children. It references two hundred graves of such children found in 2021 connected to a school in the Canadian city of Kamloops and a further fifty unearthed the following year and involving another Indian residential school, St. Joseph’s Mission. It is the latter establishment shut down in 1981 which is a special focus of this film since this school near the Sugarcane Reserve outside Williams Lake, British Columbia, was where Ed Archie NoiseCat attended and his son as co- director of this film wanted to broach the subject of this abuse from a personal angle. Thus we see him going back with his father to the school site and seeking out other survivors who can speak of what went on including the way in which so many unwanted babies fathered by Catholic priests through abuse of pupils were eliminated by being burnt in incinerators.
Approaching the subject now while survivors still exist enables direct testimony to be given while showing in addition how the trauma involved – the inability to talk about it, the sense of disgrace - has persisted and still affects families today. Julian's determination to highlight this terrible history evidences third generation involvement since his father was born in Saint Joseph’s and was lucky to have survived while Julian’s grandmother remains challenged by what happened to her all those years ago. This family is part of the Shuswap Nation but other Indian nations also suffered in the same way and for all its focus on sexual abuse Sugarcane is also concerned with the history of colonial subjugation represented by the schools forcing their indigenous pupils to forsake their own language and to speak English and instructing them in Christianity.
In view of the importance of all this, one would like to give high praise to Sugarcane and when considering its intentions one can do just that. Nevertheless, a critic must always be concerned too with the quality of the filmmaking and here this documentary reveals its limitations. This is particularly apparent when one compares this piece with the Irish documentary Stolen. The filmmakers here are clearly no less impassioned but Margo Harkin, while taking on a wider range (enforced adoptions and a history extending from 1928 to 1998), managed to find a momentum and a gift for propulsive narration that is missing in Sugarcane. The interviewees in Stolen had more to say and drew one into their personal tales far more deeply than happens here. Even in the case of the NoiseCat family who feature so prominently their story is interspersed with other footage and this jumping around results in various narrative threads carrying less weight than they should. A key example of that concerns the late Rick Gilbert to whom this film is dedicated. A former chief of the Williams Lake First Nation, he was invited to Rome to have an audience with Pope Francis. This led to the Pope expressing his sorrow for these past events in a manner that most people will surely regard as inadequate, but before leaving Rome Gilbert also spoke to Louis Lougen, Superior General of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate whose response was somewhat more appropriate. This whole segment provides an opportunity to achieve a powerful impact but is in fact undercut by the decision of the directors to show it in bits and pieces with other unrelated footage in between.
There are striking contributors in addition to the members of the NoiseCat family including Chief Willie Sellars and two investigators acting on behalf of Williams Lake First Nation, Charlene Belleau and Whitney Spearing. Nevertheless, anyone who has seen Stolen will recognise that Sugarcane falls far short of the expertise present in the crafting of that earlier piece which gave it the emotional impact of a knockout punch. But that film’s deep sincerity is equally present here and this film’s emphasis on what was done to indigenous people gives it a further importance of its own. Consequently, Sugarcane is very welcome regardless of those elements that render it less impactful than one would have wished.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Charlene Belleau, Whitney Spearing, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Ed Archie NoiseCat, Chief Willie Sellars, Rick Gilbert, Anna Gilbert, Kyé7e, Rosalin Sam, Larry Emile, Martina Pierre, Louis Lougen, Wesley Jackson, Cecilia Paul.
Dir Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, Pro Emily Kassie and Kellen Quinn, Ph Christopher LaMarca and Emily Kassie, Ed Nathan Punwar and Maya Daisy Hawke, Music Mali Obomsawin.
Impact Partners/Fit ViaVi Film/Kassie Films/Hedgehog-Dogwoof Releasing.
107 mins. Canada/USA. 2024. US Rel: 9 August 2024. UK Rel: 20 September 2024. Cert. 15.
