Ed Archie NoiseCat grapples with the shocking truth of his secretive birth at St. Joseph's Mission Indian residential school. (Credit: Emily Kassie/Sugarcane Film LLC)

‘It led us to a different truth’: Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie on the personal and public investigations at the heart of ‘Sugarcane’

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Julian Brave NoiseCat never intended to be on camera.

When the writer and filmmaker was approached by friend and former Huffington Post colleague Emily Kassie about the prospect of working together on a new project documenting the investigation of unmarked graves near a Catholic-run Indian residential school in Canada, it was to collaborate as a non-participant director.

It was only when Kassie mentioned she planned to follow 2021 Williams Lake First Nation’s investigation of St Joseph’s Mission, the school...