SUGARCANE FILM SCREENING
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2025 6:00PM
Presented by Faculty of Social Science and Humanities in Association with Indigenous Education and Cultural Services
FREE EVENT *Tickets Required
Join us on Truth and Reconciliation Day and Orange Shirt Day for a screening of the film SUGARCANE (2024), the debut documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie. The film follows the Williams Lake First Nation’s community-led investigation of the Saint Joseph Indian residential school in British Columbia. Many Indigenous children experienced abuse and went missing from the school, which was run by the Catholic Church in Canada from 1891 and 1981. Orange Shirt Day was created in response to a reunion for the school in 2013.
The film offers a compelling portrait of the community at nearby Sugarcane Reserve after the discovery of unmarked graves on the grounds of the school in 2021. As the community learns more about the past and reckons with its ongoing legacy, the film pays tribute to their resilience and ways of life. The film contributes to urgent conversations and actions across Canada working toward truth and reconciliation amidst historic and ongoing settler colonial violence. Sugarcane has won and been nominated for numerous awards, including an Oscar and a Peabody.
The event will include an introduction of the documentary by Julian Brave NoiseCat, a screening of the film, concluding with a sharing circle with the audience.
Recommended Age: 14+
Age Restriction 2+
Presented by Faculty of Social Science and Humanities in Association with Indigenous Education and Cultural Services
FREE EVENT *Tickets Required
Join us on Truth and Reconciliation Day and Orange Shirt Day for a screening of the film SUGARCANE (2024), the debut documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie. The film follows the Williams Lake First Nation’s community-led investigation of the Saint Joseph Indian residential school in British Columbia. Many Indigenous children experienced abuse and went missing from the school, which was run by the Catholic Church in Canada from 1891 and 1981. Orange Shirt Day was created in response to a reunion for the school in 2013.
The film offers a compelling portrait of the community at nearby Sugarcane Reserve after the discovery of unmarked graves on the grounds of the school in 2021. As the community learns more about the past and reckons with its ongoing legacy, the film pays tribute to their resilience and ways of life. The film contributes to urgent conversations and actions across Canada working toward truth and reconciliation amidst historic and ongoing settler colonial violence. Sugarcane has won and been nominated for numerous awards, including an Oscar and a Peabody.
The event will include an introduction of the documentary by Julian Brave NoiseCat, a screening of the film, concluding with a sharing circle with the audience.
Recommended Age: 14+
Age Restriction 2+
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, champion powwow dancer and student of Salish art and history. His first documentary, Sugarcane, directed alongside Emily Kassie, follows an investigation into abuse and missing children at the Indian residential school NoiseCat’s family was sent to near Williams Lake, British Columbia. Sugarcane premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where NoiseCat and Kassie won the Directing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition. The film was recognized with dozens of awards including Best Documentary from the National Board of Review and was nominated for an Academy Award. NoiseCat’s first book, We Survived the Night, will be published later in 2025 and his journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker. His writing has been recognized with many awards, including the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, and in 2021 he was named to the TIME100 Next list of emerging leaders.
The film's co-director and cinematographer Emily Kassie is an investigative journalist who has covered geopolitical conflict, humanitarian crises, and the stories of everyday people caught up in these events around the world. Her reporting and visual investigations have appeared in The New York Times, PBS Frontline, and The Guardian, among other publications. Her projects have been honored with multiple Emmy nominations, a Peabody future of media award, Edward R. Murrow, Overseas Press Club, World Press Photo, National Press Photographers awards and National Magazine Awards. In 2019 she was named multimedia journalist of the year by POYi and won the Peabody Future of Media award. In 2020 she was named Forbes 30 under 30 in media. She was a 2023 New America Fellow and Sundance Catalyst Fellow.
The event is co-organized by Ontario Tech University's Faculty of Social Science and Humanities and the university's Baagwating Indigenous Student Centre, an inclusive on-campus space designed to be a home away from home for Indigenous students. Ontario Tech is committed to promoting reconciliation and to building relationships of mutual respect between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in all of its actions.