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This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross.

Minutes after being born, Ed Archie Noiscat was thrown away, literally.

The infant was discovered with the garbage ready to be burned at St. Joseph's Mission School for Indigenous

Canadians. He was rescued from incineration by the Knight Watchmen. St. Joseph's was one of the

139 missionary boarding schools that indigenous children were required to attend as mandated

by the Canadian government in 1894 to help solve the, quote,

Indian problem through assimilation. There were 100 such schools in the U.S. The last one closed in

1997. An investigation that was opened in 2021 in Canada revealed that rape and infanticide were not uncommon in these schools.

My guest is Noisket's son, Julian Brave Noiscat. Julian's father is from a reservation in British

Columbia. He left the reservation and moved to the U.S. and married a white woman. Julian is their

son, and he grew up in Oakland.

His parents divorced when he was six, but his mother was determined to find ways to connect

Julian with native culture. She succeeded. She made sure he spent a lot of time on his

paternal family's reservation and with a native group in California. He became a champion powwow dancer,

a journalist covering indigenous related issues, and an activist. Last year, he co-directed a documentary

called Sugarcane about the investigation into the mission schools, their often brutal treatment

of children and the infanticide. Julian and his father are among

the people who appear in the film. The documentary also explores Julian's relationship with his father.

Sugarcane is the name of a reservation near St. Joseph's. The documentary won the directing award

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