The Ford School will host a special screening of Oscar-nominated documentary SUGARCANE at the Michigan Theatre on Monday, April 14, followed by a Q&A with filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie.
SUGARCANE follows an investigation into the abuse and missing children at St. Joseph’s Mission near Williams Lake, British Columbia, a Catholic-run Indigenous boarding school that operated until 1981. The film premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where it received the U.S. Documentary Directing Award.
NoiseCat made history as the first North American Indigenous filmmaker to earn an Academy Award nomination. “The stories of the First Peoples of this land deserve to be known and recognized,” NoiseCat shared in an Instagram post. The film has been praised widely and received the distinguished honor of a rare White House screening, attended by then-Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland. “SUGARCANE shines light on this shameful chapter of history, helping ensure that it is never forgotten or repeated," Former President Joe Biden said in a letter to the filmmaking team after the screening. “I know the story wasn’t easy to tell, but we do ourselves no favors by pretending it didn’t happen.”
NoiseCat gave the Ford School’s 2022 commencement address and was one of three inaugural Center for Racial Justice fellows in the 2022-23 academic year. During his time at the Ford School, NoiseCat worked on SUGARCANE as well as his first book, We Survived the Night, which aims to reclaim narratives about Indigenous communities in the United States and Canada. The book is set for release later this year.
Register here to attend the screening and Q&A on Monday, April 14 at 6pm.
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of American Culture, Native American Studies, and the Native American Student Association.
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