Julian Brave Noisecat

That at these schools...

Native children were separated from their parents and therefore did not necessarily know how to parent.

So when it was their turn to do that, they turned around and abandoned their own.

And I think that the story with my father is one where my grandmother at the time was a very young, unwed mother.

My grandfather was a bit of a womanizer, as I write in the book.

And there was this process at the residential school wherein unwed mothers with unwanted babies had a certain set of protocols, it appears, that they might be able to follow if they wanted to get rid of that unwanted native child, which mirrored really in a sense what was happening to native children more broadly in society because we were of course considered an Indian problem and our way of life, if not our people as a whole, were supposed to die.

Yeah, we actually learned through the research in We Survived the Night and the documentary Sugarcane that she's the only person who was ever punished for the pattern of infanticide at St.

Joseph's Mission, even though she was just a 20-year-old child.

mother at the time and as the local paper itself commented back when this happened in 1959 there's no way that she could have delivered the baby and put it into the incinerator minutes later without someone else's help and that of course that pattern also raises questions about in the words of the paper back then quote-unquote routine procedure at saint joseph's mission

But, you know, I think that there's also a lot of, understandably, a lot of guilt and pain and shame associated with having done something like that.

And so to this day, her and my father have never really been able to have a full conversation about that circumstance of his birth.

Well, the curious thing about it is that it was kind of an open secret, in a sense.

So on the one hand, my family never talked about it, and my father didn't really know the specifics around what happened when he was born and how he was found.

On the other hand, when I was a teenager, I had heard...

what I assumed at the time were ghost stories about babies being born at St.

Joseph's Mission being put into the trash incinerator there.

And just to give you a sense of how internalized the denial was, even within Native communities and families, I did not believe those stories when I heard them back then.

You know, when I went to learn language from Mai Kea, who is one of the last two remaining fluent speakers on the Canem Lake Indian Reserve, it's her and her sister.

means grandmother yes um you know i asked her a little bit about what happened at the residential schools and it became very clear with the couple stories that she was only willing to tell that it was not a subject that she ever felt you know willing to open up about and that remains her truth and at the end of the day you know that is how she has survived and you know i think that that is very understandable given the weight of the pain that she carries

Yeah, actually, the culminating scene in Sugarcane is a scene where me and my dad go visit my kia, and he, you know, tries to have a conversation with her about it.