Review: Sugarcane

Official Synopsis: An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indigenous residential school sparks a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve.

Residential schools that Native Americans were forced into have been gaining prevalence lately. Survivors are talking about their experiences, their loss of family, their native language, their homes. Unmarked graves are being discovered, like what lead filmmakers Julian Brave Noisecat and Emily Kassie to make this film, following Julian's father, a survivor of these schools among others. They are treated like a skeleton in someone's closet. Even someone like me who grew up near a reservation and saw a decent amount of Native culture integrated in my small Midwestern town never learned about them. Obviously, we know why. Because it doesn't look good for the white Christians who made this torture possible. (sorry, but these schools were faith based. We cannot ignore that)

Sugarcane is a necessary watch, but a hard one. There's so much pain in this documentary. So much loss, and so much unnecessary trauma. Many brave people recount their lives in these schools, and if there's any hope to be found, it's that some of them have healed, and some stories that were long buried are being spoken about. Those who died deserve that. They deserve to be heard. How many children were silenced at these schools? How many more mass graves will be found? How many more parents had their kids ripped away? It's a sad reality that needs to be acknowledged and studied so that it never happens again. 

Sugarcane is currently available to stream on Hulu.

Grade: A-