Author: Bryan Loomis
How do you approach subject matter like the systematic abuse and murder of natives at St. Joseph’s Mission residential school? You could find the most scandalous details and highlight them - and there are certainly scandalous details to be found here, that true crime aficionados would eat up. You could also do a meticulous history, well-researched and factual, with interviews of those still living. There are elements of both of those approaches in Sugarcane, but it mostly eschews those for a third way of covering the subject matter - a very personal and emotional journey that tracks three or four storylines pretty closely in the present day. Focusing on the present day effects and the ways that the systems are still failing those who suffered at St. Joseph’s is a very compelling choice that makes this unique exploration work.
It helps that there are no weak links in the stories we follow. Co-director Julian Brave NoiseCat has a personal relationship to the school, and we see his story of generational trauma explored with his father and grandmother. We see the chief of Williams Lake Nation People, Willie Sellars, as he advocates for his people group. We see an elder native go on a visit to the Vatican to hear from Pope Francis and have conversations with the Catholic church. Lastly, we see two natives who are investigating the unmarked graves and history of St. Josephs. This last storyline is particularly clever, as we get a lot of details about what actually happened at the school, but it’s all filtered through the discovery of these two ladies, and their emotional reactions anchor us to the effects. We aren’t uncovering the scandal for entertainments’ sake, we are seeing the devastation it has caused.
One of the key discoveries the documentarians capture and highlight is the woeful response of the present day Catholic church to their past perpetration of this abuse and murder. Pope Francis’s speech includes an apology, but he speaks more of a few bad actors than a systemic problem, and he refers to the perpetrators as “members” of the Catholic church when they were primarily priests, in leadership positions. The Catholic church needs to do much more than removing a few sick people, and it shows no signs of doing so in the footage captured here. We see priest speaking with a native who has just revealed himself to be both born as a result of a rape at the school and abused himself. The priest has the audacity to tell the native that the church needs the natives’ forgiveness so that the church can move on from this tragedy. Everything is filtered through the lens of how it affects the church, not how it affects the victims.
As you may have guessed by now, this isn’t a particularly pleasant watch. But it is very well crafted - there are many pillow shots and the material is given a lot of room to breathe, with gorgeous cinematography. A couple sequences at a rodeo that Julian participates in also add different visual and non-narrative elements in a pleasing way. The craft highlights the bold and emotionally compelling journey that the film takes its viewers on to affect change.
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