A Story of Indigenous Survival & Resurgence  ## Metadata - Author: [[Fresh Air]] - Full Title: A Story of Indigenous Survival & Resurgence - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/f844a99b-dbeb-4bc4-8f54-80d041beec17 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Father's Miraculous Rescue** - Julian Brave NoiseCat recounts his father being found in a trash incinerator at St. Joseph's Mission after birth in 1959. - He only learned the full origin story while researching the book and documentary Sugarcane. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat So my father was discovered in the trash incinerator at St. Joseph's Mission on the night of August 16, 1959. The night watchman, Tony Stoop, described his cries for life as sounding like the noise of a cat, which I only bring up because my last name is Noise Cat, which is kind of unbelievable To me because it only became Noise Cat, my last name, after it was written down wrong by those same missionaries who came to our land to turn us into Catholics. Terry Gross And it was written down long before your father was born, so they didn't know his backstory. Julian Brave NoiseCat Yes, so it was a story and a name that really found its meaning in his survival, which is, you know, there are subjects in the book that I think get at questions of the presence of ancestors And forces greater than human ones in our present life. And, you know, I didn't know the story of my father's birth until I set out to write this book and to make sugar cane. So there's also an element of telling these stories that is about touching the family histories that even your own family is too scared to tell. ([Time 0:03:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2072c319-3c92-4368-8cfc-754b28e6c295)) - **Colonization Creates Cycles Of Harm** - NoiseCat links residential-school trauma to cycles of abuse and parenting breakdown across generations. - He explains colonization's internalized oppression made some survivors repeat abuse and abandonment. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat You know, I think that this is part of the history of colonization that has often been remarked on by scholars of colonialism. You know, Frantz Fanon, for example, talked about the way that the colonized subject sometimes internalizes the oppression of colonialism. And I think it makes discussing these subjects that much more difficult for the very people who sometimes survived them. You know, the truth of the matter is, is that at these schools, children were abused. And sometimes those children grew up to themselves become abusers, that at these schools, Native children were separated from their parents, and therefore did not necessarily know How to parent. So when it was their turn to do that, they turned around and abandoned their own. ([Time 0:05:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/55d49043-d7bf-4423-baf0-336c12a9370b)) - **Grandmother Punished Alone** - NoiseCat discovered his grandmother was the only person punished in that community for infanticide patterns at St. Joseph's. - He notes local press suggested she couldn't have acted alone in disposing of the infant. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat Yeah, we actually learned through the research in We Survived the Night and the documentary Sugarcane that she's the only person who was ever punished for the pattern of infanticide At St. Joseph's Mission, even though she was just a 20-year mother at the time. And as the local paper itself commented, back when this happened in 1959, there's no way that she could have delivered the baby and put it into the incinerator minutes later without Someone else's help. ([Time 0:06:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68b29b56-eaa0-4b42-bcf9-0a00df0d45fc)) - **Moving Back For Reconciliation** - Julian moved back in with his father for two years while making Sugarcane and writing his book to rebuild their relationship. - Living together enabled recorded conversations and the emotional confrontation shown in the documentary. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat No, no, definitely no regrets. You know, I think that part of what made it possible for us to go on that road trip and to have, you know, intense conversations like that confrontation that you see in Sugarcane was that I moved in with my dad, actually, and lived with him for two years while we worked on sugarcane. And while I wrote my first book, we survived the night. And so, you know, after not living together for 22 years, I mean, he left when I was about six years old, suddenly we were living across the hallway from each other. And he'd spend his days out in the carving shed, you know, in the garage, and I'd be working on my book and working on sugarcane. And then at night we'd hang out. And we got to know each other a lot better. I'd turn on my recorder and he'd tell me stories from his life that I'd never heard before. He learned a little bit more about mine. And we really did become like best friends. Relationship that was really rebuilt because I did make the choice to move back in with him to create some opportunity for reconciliation also made it possible for us to have real and Hard conversations like the one that you see in the film. ([Time 0:19:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a7446e1e-4a7d-4d2e-a154-200a668c6732)) - **Kinship Versus Nuclear Isolation** - NoiseCat highlights indigenous kinship as broad and practical, countering nuclear-family isolation. - He argues restoring kinship can address modern social fragmentation and revive mutual support systems. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat You know, despite the fact that outsiders perhaps have not been the most kind to Native people, Native people are some of the most welcoming people in the entire world. And our sense of who can be related to us is very, very broad. I mean, I think that that is actually the story at the core of the Thanksgiving myth, for example, that the people who these pilgrims landed on their land and were struggling had them Over for a big feast. What a nice thing to do. Terry Gross What is the English way of saying your father's reservation? Julian Brave NoiseCat We call it Canom Lake, which is interesting. It's actually, Canom is not an English word. Canom comes from the Chinook trade jargon, which is like a trade language that was used in the Pacific Northwest of about 700 words. In our language, we call it Tzik'eschen, which means broken rock, essentially, because if you look up in the hill behind the rez, there's this rock formation that looks like a series Of broken rocks. Terry Gross I think it's interesting that your father left his family and the reservation, and your mother left her family too. And, you know, she didn't break ties with them. And then her mother ended up living with with you and her for several years but um it's interesting that they both kind of broke away from their families but then your mother connected You to your father's family and you've become so connected to them and to the reservation. And it seems like a bit of a pendulum swing. Julian Brave NoiseCat Yeah, you know, I think that, listen, I think society more broadly for the last number of decades has done this experiment wherein we see whether we can live in sort of individuated lives, Mostly centered around the nuclear family, or sometimes not even that, wherein to be someone's cousin, to be, you know, part of someone's extended family doesn't necessarily really Mean anything in at least, you know, dominant society, at least my mom's side of the family. And, you know, I think that part of what is really beautiful about being Native, about being Indigenous, is that being related really means something to us. We are very involved in each other's lives. We take care of each other. We feed each other. You know, we look out for one another. ([Time 0:24:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b0cab685-06c6-425b-a4f6-a0bde42249e8)) - **Learn Language By Practicing Sounds** - NoiseCat emphasizes learning and using endangered language even if you make mistakes to encourage revival. - He practiced alphabet and unfamiliar sounds with his grandmother to reclaim Sekwépemc speech. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat So when I was in college, I spent the summers on the Canham Lake Res, and in the evenings, I'd go sit at my kitchen room table, and she'd teach me s'kwat mokhjin, and the first thing we did For the first entire month was the alphabet. She basically had to teach me how to wrap my anglophone wired mouth around all of those different sounds. So it can be a bit daunting. ([Time 0:28:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/20a46310-758d-4302-985f-ae346a178113)) - **Morning Greeting As Collective Memory** - The Sekwépemc morning greeting literally says 'you survived the night,' embedding resilience into daily language. - NoiseCat sees that phrase as poetic memory of epidemics, removal, and cultural survival. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat The way to give the traditional morning greeting in Sekwet Makhchin is Chokhwinukh, which does not mean good morning. It actually means you survived the night. And I learned that because when I was about 20 learning the language from my grandmother, she would go to the cupboard and pull out a coffee mug that had chukwinukh written across it. And eventually I learned that chukwinukh was the way that we gave the morning greeting, and that it translated as, you survived the night. And ever since I learned that, I've often wondered what it meant for my people to use that word at different moments in our history. For example, what did it mean in the winter of 1863 when two-thirds of our nation died of smallpox? What did it mean in the days after the children were all taken away in cattle trucks to Indian residential schools like St. Joseph's Mission? And then I also think about the way that my ke'a uses sort of responses to that word or that word in kind of a tongue-in dark humor, rye kind of way. You know, like I'll come into her house and it might be the morning, I'll say, chukwi no ke'a, say, oh, don't remind me. Because, you know, she's getting on that older side of things now. And I just think that there's so much in that, you know, so much poetry. There's social commentary. There's a little bit of humor. ([Time 0:29:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f8e48670-dd03-419b-92ca-f2be958394a3)) - **Powwow Dancing As Home** - Julian describes being a men's northern traditional powwow dancer and traveling across Indian country to compete. - He credits powwow dancing with giving him meaning, connection, and love. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat A powwow is a kind of pan-tribal cultural gathering and celebration. There are different kinds of dance styles that happen at a powwow. Each has their own sort of tribal origin and story associated with them. Some of them, by the way, are quite modern. Like they came out of like the 1960s and sort of the feminist revolution and how that impacted some of our cultures and traditions. But they are really beautiful sort of summer, usually in the summer, although not exclusively gatherings, where people from all over Indian country come together and there's drum Groups that, you know, go sit around a circle and they compete in singing contests. And then there's dancers in different age categories and dance style categories. And so I was what's called a men's northern traditional dancer primarily, which is probably the oldest powwow dance style. It's a dance derived from dances of the war and the hunt that were common among all sorts of different First Nations across this continent. ([Time 0:34:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/df4cd6d9-adbf-440a-ad3a-80bbbe0ff4cc)) - **Prepare Spiritually Before Telling Trauma** - Before telling painful family histories, Julian chose to fast and pray to protect loved ones and himself. - He framed cultural responsibility and spiritual preparation as necessary when sharing traumatic stories. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat And, you know, the missions, St. Joseph's, was in part about a form of spiritual colonization, where in one way of life and way of belief was replaced with another. And I was also, I understood myself to be telling some very painful stories, ones that could potentially hurt the people who I was telling them about, the people who I love, people like My father, people like my grandmother. And so, you know, I was made aware that in one of the neighboring communities to my own, a res called Esket in our language, it's called the Alkali Lake Indian Reserve in English. They do an annual fast for four days and four nights, usually right around the summer solstice. This is a really ancient ceremony that my people have participated in for a very long time, and it has come back in recent decades. And I decided that, you know, if I was going to take on the responsibility of telling the story of what happened at the mission and the impacts of it on myself and my family and my people, If I was going to tell a hard story about our family that I needed to pray and to make sure that, you know, the people who I cared about were taken care of and protected, not just in the way That I went about actually writing and telling those stories, but in a spiritual sense as well. ([Time 0:35:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/beb05692-7cc0-4d35-ac36-8fe95a9b192d)) - **Use Fasting To Build Discipline** - Participate in traditional fasts to build discipline and spiritual awareness before major work. - NoiseCat says four days and nights without food or water sharpens resolve and reconnects to life force. Transcript: Julian Brave NoiseCat Four days and four nights with no food and no water. And the no water part is the really intense part, because if you look it up, according to the Mayo clinic a human can really only go three to five days without any water and so four days and Nights without any food and water is right up against what you can survive which is a very um i mean like by the end of it your eyes are yellow and you have no spit in your mouth um but at the Same time is that it it does bring you into touch with the power of the life force that is coursing through all of us, which I think is a really beautiful thing to be in awareness of. ([Time 0:37:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3c44c82a-f461-4176-b8fc-bd0469cee042))