Julian Brave Noisecat’s 'We Survived the Night' is part memoir, part Native history

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

As a newborn, Ed Archie NoiseCat was found in an incinerator at a Catholic-run Indian boarding school. In a new book We Survived the Night, his son, Julian Brave NoiseCat, writes about this trauma in the broader context of Native history in the United States and Canada. The book blends memoir and reporting, exploring a culture of silence around Native stories. In today’s episode, Julian Brave NoiseCat speaks with NPR’s Michel Martin about his efforts to understand both his father’s story and Native identity.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. You know, at NPR, we pride ourselves on bringing
0:07.8	you books written from different perspectives, different walks of life, writers from different cultures,
0:12.7	races, and countries, you name it. And what's interesting to me is that there are always some
0:17.2	common threads, some shared universal questions that we're all grappling with.
0:23.1	Today on the show, that question is, what's the deal with my dad? Julian Brave Noised Cat's new book,
0:29.2	We Survive the Night, is an artfully written nonfiction book that blends journalism with
0:33.8	mythology, history, and memoir. And in this interview with Empires-Michael Martin, it's clear
0:38.6	he comes with a unique perspective. And yet, if you boil this book down to its core essence,
0:44.3	it's about that central question, which is something we can all relate to. That's coming up.
0:50.3	In August 1959, a watchman at a Catholic-run Indian boarding school in British Columbia, Canada,
0:56.9	heard a noise, a cry really coming from the incinerator.
1:00.9	It was a newborn baby left in an ice cream carton.
1:04.3	It was author and filmmaker Julian Brave Noise Cat's father, Ed.
1:08.7	Ed's beginning was unusual, but what followed was not. Brave Noisket
1:13.0	weaves his father's story into the larger canvas of the native experience in a new book titled
1:17.7	We Survive the Night, and he's with us now to tell us more about it. Julian, Brave Noisket,
1:22.6	thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you so much for having me on the public airwaves.
1:27.2	So let's start with the name of your book. There's a meaning to it. Thank you so much for having me on the public airwaves. So let's start with
1:28.3	the name of your book. There's a meaning to it. Yeah, so we survived the night. The title of my book
1:33.6	is derived from the traditional way to give the morning greeting in Sequat Machin. That's my family's
1:39.6	language, my indigenous language. We say chokinuk, which doesn't actually translate to good morning.
1:45.6	It means you survived the night. You write about Indian names in your book and you say names come with
	...

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