January 9, 2025 – This documentary details a small piece of a much larger picture of abuse in North America and elsewhere that went on for many years in schools to “re-educate” indigenous children, and to strip them of their native languages and beliefs, and replace them with Western languages and beliefs.

Although the story is set in Canada, and the school in question was run by the Catholic Church, similar abuses took place in the United States and other countries, including Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The point of these schools was to show the so-called “savages” that the Christian faith and western values are better than native ones. Unfortunately, the schools too often proved the opposite.

This documentary focuses on efforts to investigate years of abuse at the St. Joseph's Indian Residential School (also known as the Cariboo Residential School) near the Sugarcane Reserve community of the Williams Lake First Nation in British Columbia, Canada. The movie was made by Julian Brave NoiseCat, a member of the Canim Lake Band of the Secwepemc Nation and by Emily Kassie, a Canadian filmmaker and investigative journalist.

Julian Brave NoiseCat, his father, Ed Archie NoiseCat, and Rick Gilbert, former tribal chief are all main characters of their own story, along with other family members, in this movie. Their lives are all deeply connected to the St. Joseph's Indian Residential School, operated by the Canadian Indian Residential School system from 1891 to 1981. The movie, however, is wider in scope, connecting to all the similar schools in Canada.

This is a difficult film to watch because it includes some real horror stories of murder, sexual and physical abuse of children and teenagers by members of the church at the school. There are stories of suicides and children who died trying to escape from the school. There are stories of memories so terrible that survivors can't bear to speak of them. They continue to be haunted by these experiences, in part, because they were taught to be ashamed of what happened to them.

One person in the film finds out through DNA testing that his father was a priest at the school. There are stories of infants born at the school who are killed and incinerated to hide evidence of their existence. An apparently rare survival of this practice is the subject of a story in the September 28th, 1959 issue of The Williams Lake Tribune, which states, “A newborn babe was found abandoned in a garbage burner at the Cariboo Residential School late on the night of August 16th.”

There are scenes in the film of investigators using ground penetrating radar to search the grounds of the St. Joseph's School. The investigation reveals a large number of unmarked graves, which may be linked to a similar number of suspicious deaths at the school.

If the church and government sought to wipe out the native language, culture and religion, they failed, because the language and culture are on full display in this film. The film also includes scenes filmed at the Vatican, where Rick Gilbert goes to meet with officials about the school. Pope Francis and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau both appear in the film speaking about issues related to the Canadian Indian Residential School system, and other similar schools.

This is a big subject, but this film succeeds by making it very personal, especially the very emotional personal cost of what happened at this school. The attempts to confront the past include a number of churches in Canada being burned by those angry about this issue. The film includes a scene of people trying to protect church property by hiding it at home for fear of their church being burned down.

There are attempts being made, including some being shown in the film, to confront the past, and to get at the truth of what happened, but much is left to do, and this movie is a reminder of that. This movie rates an A.

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