The Harvard Divinity School community and guests gathered on Nov. 12 for a reception and screening of “Sugarcane,” a National Geographic documentary highlighting the painful history of Indian boarding schools through the lens of survivors and descendants.
HDS Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams and executive producer Geralyn White Dreyfous curated the screening and introduced film’s co-directors, Emily Kassie, who was in attendance, and Julian Brave NoiseCat, who joined over video.
“Sugarcane” documents NoiseCat’s investigation of the Canadian Indian residential school system through the self-narrated stories of his family who survived the schools. The film also follows other survivors, their personal investigations into the schools, and their shared experience of reckoning with their pasts while hoping for a better future.
Following the film, Ann Braude, senior lecturer on American Religious History and director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at HDS, moderated a discussion among Kassie and four Indigenous scholars: Robert Warrior, Jonah Yellowman, Cynthia Wilson, and Darren Parry.
During the discussion, panelists emphasized the trauma and resilience of Indigenous communities, connecting their own stories with those featured in the documentary.
“This film highlights intergenerational trauma, those relationships, and how they affect every relationship from the abused to many generations down the road,” shared Parry, the former chairperson of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation. “We have this intergenerational trauma as people, but we also have resilience and resistance woven into that same DNA. I know this because we are still here. We survive. We continue to call things out when they are wrong, and we continue to fight.”
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