Why did Gary Anandasangaree sponsor a screening of a film which libels Canada and the Catholic Church?
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By Nina Green
An Instagram posting on 27 November 2024 announced that Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree had sponsored a screening of Sugarcane on Parliament Hill for Senators and Members of Parliament the previous evening:
Last night Directors Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat joined Chief Willie Sellars on Parliament Hill for a special screening of SUGARCANE for Senators and Members of Parliament. Lawmakers from the very same bodies that created the Indian residential schools—and that have a responsibility to address the schools’ enduring, harmful legacies—watched the film and were deeply moved. A few senators even committed to hosting a watch party when the film streams on Disney+ beginning December 10. We are grateful to the Williams Lake First Nation and Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Gary Anandasangaree for the opportunity. It meant the world to hear the voices of our courageous participants echo through the halls of government.
The Instagram posting featured remarks by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:
Our friend, who we already miss incredibly intensely, Murray Sinclair, impressed on me that reconciliation is a process, an ambitious ongoing process. To think of when reconciliation will be over, when we'll finally be completed in that, um, it's probably not to understand the nature of reconciliation. But I think, you know, our moment [film pauses here; perhaps some words have dropped out] documentary Sugarcane that you are showing tomorrow night here in Ottawa that has already been extremely inpactful around the world, it is going to be an important moment to highlight and to share one story of reconciliation in a way that I think will leave people a deeper understanding of how it applies to them in whatever part of the country or the world.
It appears the Prime Minister had been misinformed, and had been led to believe that Sugarcane is a film about reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Sugarcane hinders reconciliation in the worst possible way. It promulgates a falsehood which libels both Canada and the Catholic Church — the claim that an investigation by Charlene Belleau had 'uncovered a pattern of infanticide' at the former St Joseph's Indian Residential School in Williams Lake, British Columbia, in which priests impregnated students, and priests and nuns threw the unwanted babies into the school's incinerator.
In reality, long-time Indian activist Charlene Belleau's so-called 'investigation' at St Joseph's uncovered no evidence of 'a pattern of infanticide' other than a single regrettable instance in 1959 in which a 20-year-old Indian woman, Antoinette Archie, placed her newborn infant, fathered by an Indian man (Ray Peters) in the St Joseph's outdoor incinerator, for which crime she was sentenced to a year in prison. She appealed the sentence, but her appeal was denied. Her newborn son, Ed Archie NoiseCat, was raised by his alcoholic grandparents on the Canim Lake Reserve in conditions of extreme poverty. When he reached young adulthood, he left the reserve as soon as he could, and found a new life as an artist in the United States, where he married Alexandra Roddy, by whom he was the father of Sugarcane's co-director, the activist Julian Brave NoiseCat.
In short, Sugarcane's claim to have discovered 'a pattern of infanticide' is completely unsupported in the film. The only crime documented in the film was committed by a 20-year-old Indian woman, and even then the crime did not amount to infanticide as the child was rescued from the incinerator, and lived.
Sugarcane has been nominated for an Oscar in the feature documentary category. That should not have happened. The hallmark of a documentary is that it is factual, but Sugarcane is not factual. It is a strange blend of deceptive film-making and outright falsehood throughout.
Canadians can only marvel at Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree's decision to sponsor a screening of this harmful film to lawmakers on Parliament Hill.
For reviews of Sugarcane which establish the real facts about the film, see this C2C article, this article in the Catholic Register, and this article by Barbara Kay published in yesterday’s National Post.
See also the very extensive fact check document published to these pages which exposes Sugarcane's manifold errors and the sleight of hand by which it confuses and misleads viewers.
Thanks for reading. For even more on this topic from Nina Green read, Why did the Williams Lake Band, in its documentary Sugarcane, suppress crucial facts about Antoinette Archie?
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