WARNING: This story contains details that may be disturbing to some readers. Discretion is recommended.
A documentary has been nominated for an Oscar following an investigation into allegations of abuse and missing children at St. Joseph’s Mission residential school in Williams Lake.
sugar cane It won the Best Documentary Feature award at the Academy Awards later this winter.
Secwepemc filmmaker Julian Brave Noisecat and Toronto journalist, director, producer and cinematographer Emily Kassie explore allegations that priests who sent their children to school with their students to be killed in incinerators.
“This movie meant the world to me,” Noisecat told Global News, explaining that his father was born at the school.
“What really hung over me about the moment of nomination was whether our work would actually be recognized and whether this story and its importance and the feeling at its core would be seen. “I perceived it this way.”
Kashi said a wave of emotion hit her when she heard the film had been nominated.
“Our entire team just gave everything they had to give to something bigger than all of us,” she said.
“Our participants were incredibly vulnerable and brave.”
On May 27, 2021, Tk’emlúps Te Secwepemc announced that it had identified over 200 potential Indigenous children at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Break National News
For news affecting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered straight to you as it happens.
Noisecat said it was a stimulus sugar cane.
It also coincided with the launch of an inquiry being held on the site of the former St Joseph’s Mission residential school.
“I think it’s most accurate to say that there’s an agency that spans across multiple generations, with people telling these stories, including people who are no longer with us. Noisecat said.
“In that way, it feels like an incredibly special story, a story that has been an incredibly important part of our lives.”
Terry Teegee, president of the BC Assembly of First Nations, said seeing the film nominated for an Oscar further validates the story.
“I think it’s really important to understand this colony, which I would say is genocide. The policies imposed on First Nations and indigenous peoples in North America have had a profound impact on indigenous peoples, and it will clearly take generations to recover from these. “It was a policy of genocide imposed on the first nation,” he said.
“This is too good a way to be good, so it was nominated for Best Documentary Film, which is why it’s so important to see the movie. And certainly, being nominated for an Oscar will spread the word.”
Noisecat’s father, Ed Archie Noisecat, born at Williams Lake Residential School, appears in the film with his son.
Ed Archie Noisecat is from St. Gives up the shocking truth of his secret birth at St. Joseph’s Mission Indian Residential School.
Credit: Emily Kassie/Sugarcane Film LLC)
The young Noisecat said it was difficult to tell such an intensely personal story, but many people believed him and Kassie with their story.
‘When your story is an unreported story of what happened in this case – in this case the babies born at St. Joseph’s Mission and when people ask us to tell their stories about what happened and when people told them They trust you with their stories about what happened to them. I think it became clear to me. “I think there is some responsibility in sharing our stories and the role of families,” he said.
Noisecat needed a lot of courage, especially from his father.
“(He) still suffers a lot from the circumstances of his birth,” he said. “I am incredibly grateful to him and my family for believing in me to tell the story and for having the courage to want to ask the questions.”
The R-rated film premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and has already won several awards.
It was acquired by National Geographic Documentary Films and is available to stream on Disney+. National Geographic is also airing the film on February 16, 2025.
The Academy Awards will be handed out in Los Angeles on March 2nd.
The Indian Residential School Crisis Line (1-800-721-0066) is available 24 hours a day to anyone experiencing distress or distress as a result of their residential school experience.
Support is available through the 24-hour National Indian Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419.
Hope for Wellness Help Line provides culturally competent counseling and crisis intervention to all Indigenous people experiencing trauma, pain, strong emotions and painful memories. The line can be reached toll-free at 1-855-242-3310.
& Copy 2025 Global News, Corus Entertainment Inc.
