National Geographic Film Screening at HDS Examines Indigenous Trauma and Resilience

November 21, 2024

Panelists at the Sugarcane film screening and discussion

From left: Robert Warrior, Cynthia Wilson, Emily Kassie, Darren Parry, Jonah Yellowman, and Ann Braude. / Photo: Caroline Cataldo

The Harvard Divinity School community and guests gathered on November 12 for a reception and screening of the 2024 film 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 attendence, 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 between 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.”

Terry Tempest Williams speaking at the front of the James Room — HDS Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams spoke at the beginning of the film screening. / Photo: Caroline Cataldo

The panel also discussed the importance of community and ceremony in Indigenous healing. “I loved how they highlighted community, the pow wow dances and the sweat and all of those things that make my Indigenous community what I love,” Parry said.

Wilson, the HDS Religion and Public Life Native and Indigenous Rights Fellow, shared that she found the film to be personally healing. “I felt the trauma get pushed out of me,” she said.

Kassie explained that this sense of ceremony and community was intentional. “In many ways, we see the whole film as a ceremony,” she said.

The panelists concluded by reflecting on the broader implications of the film in raising awareness and fostering healing.

Kassie shared that while working on the documentary film: “It was incredibly painful to know that the communities who had suffered such unimaginable harm at the hands of these institutions are continuing to suffer from the highest rates of suicide and addiction and cycles of abuse. It takes us knowing this to be able to start assisting and giving people room to tell the truth and move forward.”

The film and discussion provided space for the sharing of these stories at HDS. Students, faculty, and guests alike continued to discuss the film after the panel had ended. While the panelists discussed Indigenous trauma, they also focused heavily on Indigenous resilience, resounding the film’s concluding quote: “Indigenous people are still dying from residential schools, and still living despite them.”

—by Scarlett Rose Ford, HDS news correspondent