Sugarcane

Such a beautiful and compassionately crated piece of film making. Stays with you long after watching.

As a Canadian and a Christian, I was shocked at claims of genocide and mass graves when they were first made. Since then I am continually looking for the Truth. Not one body, not one charge by the RCMP, and shock-u-mentary like this one filled with lies. Just another get on the gravy train while it still exists. Canadians have a right to evidence based truths, not fictional story telling like this turned out to be after a couple hours of looking for the truth.

Starting as a low-boil documentary unfolding the story of Canadian boarding schools, the heartbreak comes as the survivors better understand the horrors they and previous generations endured.

Powerful. Devastating. Painful. Unmarked graves. Incinerators. Victims and witnesses. This was cultural genocide.

Every country has a stain on their history. This is unfortunately Canada's. Finding these unmarked graves re-opened generally still fresh wounds among the native population. This film is a raw emotional portrayal of the suffering and resilience found among survivors of residential schools.

Viewing this shockumentary should be for the entertainment value only. It is so shallow on hard facts that when checked into, the viewer would realize this is no more than a story telling. Many lies are told in order to have the outcome the producers wanted.

This is a documentary about deaths at Canadian Indian schools, a pretty awful history echoed on our side of the border. Like some of the other nominees I’ve seen, though, the important story was just not presented in a way I appreciated. In this case, it was … told … so … slowly. I was truly interested, but I literally had to shake myself out of falling asleep multiple times. Like The Six Triple Eight, I think I’d rather just have read the Wikipedia page.

Devastating doesn’t even begin to cover it. The movie hit hard, really hard. The wake of trauma these men left behind is staggering. And it’s not just the individuals affected -- it’s the generational trauma that never really leaves. The Catholic Church, and all the complicit players, left this massive wound. It’s not just in the past; it’s a cycle that keeps rolling forward, revisiting the children of the traumatized. That’s the especially haunting part. I don’t know how to reconcile it all. I’m surrounded by beauty in the world and at the same time, I’m faced with darkness that’s impossible to ignore. And then there's the land I live on, stolen from indigenous people through acts not my own, yet still tied to me. Even if it’s not my direct ancestors, it’s my culture’s doing. Just... wrecked. Totally wrecked.

Documenting a shameful time in Canadian history, Sugarcane chronicles the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at Residential schools in Williams Lake, BC, Canada. Run by the Catholic Church from the late 1800's until the last one was closed in 1997 (in Canada and the United States), and created to solve "the Indian problem", these schools suppressed the culture and heritage of the Native children while covering up physical and sexual abuse of the students. When the girls would get pregnant, they were taken away to give birth and the babies for incinerated. A tough watch but an important one.

I dont get how a documentary can have so many factual errors. The big proof is supposed to be Priest DNA, which proves nothing. The incinerator claim is even more ridiculous and has no real evidence. You’d think after the Canadian mass graves turned out to be hoaxes films like this wouldnt be acceptable to once great NatGeo. But the Disney campaign against Catholics must continue. Disgusting.