On our latest episode of Tell Me About Your Father, I talk with Julian Brave NoiseCat, an American and Canadian writer, filmmaker, and member of the Canim Lake Band in what is now British Columbia.
His new book, We Survived the Night—out October 14—begins with the story of his father, Ed Archie NoiseCat, who as a newborn was found abandoned in an incinerator at the St. Joseph’s Mission, one of the many Catholic-run Indian residential schools in Canada. Julian’s grandmother attended that same school, where thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their families, forbidden from speaking their languages, and subjected to abuse. Julian’s grandmother rarely speaks of what happened, and her memories of that time are, understandably, fractured. After giving birth to Ed, she was even sentenced to a year in jail.
Despite that history, Ed built a life as a celebrated artist. His carvings and sculptures are held in major collections, including the Smithsonian Institution. But as Julian writes, even his father’s brilliance couldn’t fully eclipse the pain of what he inherited.
Julian’s 2024 documentary Sugarcane made history earlier this year when it was nominated for an Academy Award, making him the first Indigenous filmmaker from North America nominated in the Best Documentary category. The film investigates what happened to his grandmother, father and the children of Williams Lake First Nation at the schools, and the silence that followed. It also traces decades of denial by the Catholic Church and the Canadian government, and the belated apologies that have come only in recent years.
In We Survived the Night, Julian turns more of that story inward, using his background as a journalist to examine his family’s survival and his own complicated, loving relationship with his father. Threaded throughout is the story of Coyote, the original trickster and imperfect father figure, a mythic presence who mirrors both his dad’s chaos and his people’s endurance.
The book, which you can buy here, is as much about fathers and forgiveness as it is about Indigenous storytelling, memory, and survival in the aftermath of genocide. Mostly, it’s about writing our own histories and what it means to tell the truth with love. As Julian told me, he tries to tell these stories with as much care and honesty as possible, and “where that falls short,” he said, “that’s what I pray for.”
Elizabeth
