"Minutes after being born, Ed Archie NoiseCat was thrown away. A janitor at St. Joseph's Mission School for Indigenous Canadians discovered the infant as he was preparing to burn the garbage. Ed's son, writer and filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat, was an adult before he learned the full story of his father's birth. "My family never talked about it, and my father didn't really know the specifics around what happened when he was born and how he was found," Julian says."
"St. Joseph's Mission School was one of more than 100 missionary boarding schools that Indigenous children were required to attend, as mandated by the Canadian government in 1894. Julian's father, a member of the Secwepemc tribe, eventually left the Canim Lake Indian Reserve in British Columbia, and moved to the U.S. where he married Julian's mother, who is white. Though his parents divorced when he was 6, Julian's mother was determined to find ways for her son to connect with Native culture."
Minutes after birth, Ed Archie NoiseCat was discarded and later discovered by a janitor at St. Joseph's Mission School. The family maintained silence about the circumstances, and Ed lacked details about his own birth. Julian Brave NoiseCat grew up between his mother's home and his father's Secwepemc reserve, becoming a powwow dancer and activist. St. Joseph's was one of over 100 government-mandated missionary boarding schools that removed Indigenous children from their families. Julian co-directed the 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane and wrote We Survived the Night, blending memoir, Indigenous history, and coyote stories to convey cultural survival.
Read at www.npr.org
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