Julian Brave NoiseCat on Residential Schools, Indigenous History, and His Book 'We Survived the Night'

The Meaning of 'We Survived the Night'

• 💬 The title "We Survived the Night" is derived from a traditional greeting in the Secwepemc (Shuswap) language, meaning "you survived the night."
• 😔 This greeting carries profound weight, reflecting the historical struggles of ancestors who faced smallpox epidemics and the trauma of children being taken to Indian residential schools.
• 💡 The language itself, nearly lost due to colonization, holds a unique blend of social commentary, resilience, and dark humor.

The Legacy of Indian Residential Schools

• 🏫 For over 150 years in Canada, church-run, state-funded boarding schools were mandatory for Indigenous children, enforced by the Indian Act.
• 💔 These institutions separated children from families, forbade their languages, and were sites of widespread abuse, violence, and death.
• 🌍 The system, described as cultural genocide by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada, aimed to eradicate Indigenous ways of life and was mirrored by 417 similar schools in the United States.

A Father's Discovery and Family History

• 👶 Julian Brave NoiseCat's father, Ed Archie NoiseCat, was found as a newborn in a garbage incinerator at the St. Joseph's Mission residential school in 1959.
• 🤫 This deeply traumatic event, part of his family's history, was largely unspoken for years, a common coping mechanism for survivors of colonization and oppression.
• 🔍 NoiseCat learned this story through his filmmaking and writing, uncovering a painful truth that his family had internalized.

Critiquing the Papal Apology

• 🇻🇦 The author discusses the Pope's apology to residential school survivors, noting it was framed as an apology for the actions of individual priests rather than an institutional or collective apology from the Catholic Church.
• 🧐 This framing, he argues, downplays systemic patterns of abuse found across Catholic institutions globally, suggesting a deliberate attempt to obscure the full extent of wrongdoing.
• 🙏 Many survivors, like the late Chief Rick Gilbert, remained faithful Catholics but felt profoundly let down by the church's response.

Personal Connections and Rediscovery

• 💖 The book is dedicated to NoiseCat's mother, an Irish Jewish New Yorker, who facilitated his connection to his father's Indigenous family and culture despite his father's absence.
• 🤝 He later moved in with his father at age 28, embarking on a journey to rediscover his father's life stories and artistic legacy through recorded conversations.
• 🎭 NoiseCat found striking parallels between his father's life as a creator, destroyer, and survivor, and the trickster coyote figure in Indigenous oral histories.

Indigenous Identity and Resistance

• 🇺🇸 Wearing an American flag headband upside down is a symbolic act of cultural pride and subversion, challenging dominant symbols of the land and asserting Indigenous sovereignty.
• ✊ This gesture reflects a phase of political reawakening and pride within Indigenous communities, echoing movements like the American Indian Movement.