Sugarcane review – trauma and truth unearthed in Indigenous children’s schools scandal

SooToday - September 10, 2024

Powerful documentary probes the shameful story of hundreds of residential schools in Canada, largely run by the Catholic church, that subjected pupils to horrific abuse.

This deeply disquieting and indeed enraging documentary is about the hundreds of residential “Indian schools” for Indigenous children in Canada, largely administered by the Catholic church from the 1930s until the 1990s. It highlights the grotesque scandal of one in particular: the St Joseph’s Mission school in British Columbia (long since closed) where Indigenous children were routinely subject to physical and sexual abuse, with girls impregnated by their rapist-abusers. Some prosecutions of individual priests were brought. Reports were made. But very clearly, this hardly scratches the surface.