Four years have passed since we first embarked on the journey of creating “Sugarcane,” and now, it’s thrilling to see our documentary in the spotlight, vying for an Oscar this Sunday. Our film delved deep into a chilling investigation, revealing unsettling truths about babies born to Native girls, some fathered by priests, at St. Joseph’s Mission. Tragically, those innocent lives were either unlawfully adopted or horrifyingly disposed of in the incinerator. With “Sugarcane,” we’ve shone a light on a grim reality that had previously gone unnoticed: evidence pointing to infanticide at a North American Indian residential school. This story takes on an even more personal note, as we discovered that it echoes the experience of my own father. He was born to Indigenous parents and survived against all odds when a watchman found him, making him the only known survivor of such horrors at the school.
Our documentary raises a pressing question: if cover-ups like this happened at one school, what about the other 138 residential schools in Canada? And what secrets are yet to be uncovered at the many Native American boarding schools across the United States—places that, unlike Canada, have seen limited investigation and accountability?
It’s a profound honor to be recognized as the first Indigenous filmmaker from North America nominated for an Academy Award. Yet, I sincerely hope I won’t be the last. Some might view this nomination as a milestone, evidence that Hollywood has moved beyond the days when Native peoples were persistently depicted as mere footnotes, meeting their end at the hands of larger-than-life cowboys. Those depictions shared their timeline with the peak of residential schools, institutions aimed at erasing Indigenous cultures, sometimes at the cost of the children’s lives.
These dark segments of North American history—where cultural genocide spanned well over a century and a half—remain largely in the shadows. Today, certain right-wing factions in Canada and the United States are trying to cloud these historical truths. We must bolster our efforts to document and honor the stories of the elderly survivors of this relentless system before we lose those voices and their invaluable narratives forever.
Alarmingly, similar policies persist today, such as the separation of Indigenous families at the southern U.S. border, alongside renewed calls for territorial appropriation and ethnic cleansing. These issues aren’t foreign imports; they’re deeply rooted within our own societies. Hollywood, much like other industries, now finds itself on the edge, potentially succumbing to backwards notions that threaten pluralism and diversity.
