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For almost my entire life, I did not know the story of my father's birth.

I did not know that those whispers I heard about the incinerator at the mission

weren't just res legends.

I did not know that for dad, me, my sister, and all the noise cats who will come after us, this is our origin story.

In fact, I didn't even know there was much to know about my father's birth until I was well into my

20s. All I knew was that Kea attended St. Joseph's,

that she finished high school and studied nursing

at the Kamloops Indian Residential School 150 miles south of Williams Lake,

and that she rarely said a word about any of it.

That's Julian Brave Noisket, writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker,

champion powwow dancer, and student of

Salish Art and History.

His first book, We Survived the Night, has just been published.

Julian's is a story of legacy, the power of the unspoken, the complexity of identity,

the weight of history, and the myths that are passed down from generation to generation that can help us, if we let them, make sense of family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

My parents came from two completely different worlds. My dad was born at St. Joseph's Mission,

which is an Indian residential school in the interior of British Columbia,

Canada, and he was actually found just minutes after his birth in the trash incinerator by

the night watchman at the school. From there, he was raised by first his grandparents on the

...