“Sugarcane” represents your first venture into filmmaking, and it has garnered significant attention, from winning the directing award at Sundance to now receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary. What do these recognitions mean to you, particularly as a Indigenous North American filmmaker telling such a deeply personal story about your family and your community? 

It’s an honor to be the first Indigenous North American nominated for an Academy Award. But I hope I’m not the only one for long. There are so many talented storytellers and incredible untold stories across Indian Country. I have dedicated my life to helping tell those stories and I want to see more Indigenous storytellers’ work recognized and celebrated at the highest levels of our artforms.

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Your investigation into the horrors that transpired at St. Joseph’s Mission led to the uncovering of evidence that had never been publicly revealed before. Could you describe how you and co-director Emily Kassie navigated the responsibility of bringing these truths to light?

“Sugarcane” follows concurrent investigations. One into abuse and missing children at St. Joseph’s Mission, the Indian residential school my family was sent to near Williams Lake, British Columbia. Another, into the family secrets that have lingered unspoken in my own family and our community. But I could have never predicted that the Williams Lake First Nation’s investigation would uncover a pattern of infanticide at St. Joseph’s and that my own father would be the only known survivor of the incinerator at the school.

In addition to the accolades, the film was screened at the White House in early January 2025. How do you hope this increased visibility will impact the ongoing conversation about the themes that run through “Sugarcane”?

The Indian residential schools in Canada and Native American boarding schools in the United States were part of a continent-wide effort to forcibly separate Indigenous children from their families and assimilate them into white Christian society. The American architect of this system described its mission as to “kill the Indian, save the man.” The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada has determined that the Indian residential schools perpetrated a cultural genocide. This is one of the most significant, untold and foundational stories for all of North America. While “Sugarcane” has been part of a long overdue conversation about this essential history, screening in both Canadian Parliament and the White House, in the wake of a federal election in the United States and with a federal election looming in Canada, this era of investigation and reckoning appears to be drawing to a close far too soon. As the groundbreaking investigation documented in “Sugarcane” shows, there is so much we still do not know about what happened at these schools.

As a 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize recipient, could you speak to how the prize’s support impacts freelance journalists’ ability to pursue complex, long-form investigative stories, and what it meant specifically for your work or trajectory? 

I received the American Mosaic Journalism Prize at a moment in my career when I could finally transition to full-time projects like “Sugarcane” and my forthcoming book, “We Survived the Night,” which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2025. I took $10,000 from the prize and invested it directly into the production costs for our shoot at the Vatican following the late Williams Lake First Nation Chief Rick Gilbert as he attended the Pope’s historic apology to residential school survivors. It would not be a stretch to say that the resources and network of the Mosaic prize have shaped the course of my career and changed my life.