[Episcopal News Service] “Sugarcane,” an Oscar-nominated documentary about the oppression of Indigenous people at white-run North American boarding schools, is getting top billing this month at screenings by several Episcopal congregations across the United States.
Scheduled discussions of the film, which premiered at Sundance in 2024, have spanned from Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Chandler, Arizona, on Jan. 9 to Redemption Episcopal Church in Southampton, Pennsylvania on Jan. 10. The Episcopal Church in Connecticut held its screening and discussion on Jan. 17. Others are planned in Oregon, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Although the movie is not about The Episcopal Church — its central narrative focuses on boarding school victims and survivors in Canada — the themes resonate with Episcopalians who are grappling with their own church’s past complicity in the U.S. Indigenous boarding school system. That system was intended to assimilate the children into white society at the expense of their Native American identities, languages and cultures.
“One of the things that we hear far too often about this history is that people had no clue — at the same time as it was their own churches that were sometimes carrying out this assimilationist agenda,” Julian Brave NoiseCat, who directed “Sugarcane” with Emily Kassie, said in an online discussion of the film with Episcopal Divinity School in September 2025.
After that discussion with NoiseCat and Kassie, EDS put out a call to Episcopal congregations to organize their own screenings of the documentary and invited them to apply for financial support, including for space rental, refreshments, advertising and panelist honorariums, through a limited EDS grant program.
EDS told Episcopal News Service that it received 43 applications and was able to award five $500 grants. One of them went to Christ Church Episcopal Parish in Lake Oswego, a suburb of Portland, Oregon.
“It moved me very deeply,” Sydney Fitzpatrick, a Christ Church member, said of seeing “Sugarcane” for the first time. She organized the Jan. 25 screening at Christ Church as an opportunity for all Episcopalians in the Western Oregon diocese to learn more about boarding school history and its impact.
As convenor of the diocese’s Task Force on Truth and Reconciliation, she added that the diocese still has foundational work to do in building bridges and fostering healing. “One of the things we haven’t done as good a job of as we should in Oregon is developing relations with our Indigenous siblings,” Fitzpatrick sad.
With the demand for the EDS grants overwhelming the availability, several churches are moving forward on their own with screenings and discussions of “Sugarcane,” which also is available for home viewing on Disney+ and Hulu.
The weather, however, has disrupted some of those plans. St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., had scheduled its screening on Jan. 24, with a panel discussion including leaders from the Piscataway Nation. Because of this weekend’s pending winter storm, St. Mark’s rescheduled its screening for March. St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Newport News, Virginia, also postponed its screening to March while canceling all activities on Jan. 25 because of the anticipated snow.
Indigenous students endured a wide spectrum of experiences at the boarding schools, dating as far back as the 1819. Some were forced to attend the schools, run by the federal government and Christian denominations, while other families voluntarily sent their children to receive what often was the only education available. In some cases, they faced a nightmare of mistreatment, abuse and even death far from home. Other boarding school survivors recall no physical abuse but still experienced trauma from the family separation and deprivation of their culture and identity.
In recent years, The Episcopal Church has confirmed its involvement in at least 34 of the more than 500 known boarding schools in the United States. That research and related work is being led by the church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Commission on Native Schools.
Leora Tadgerson, the commission’s co-chair and a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community, has worked with the EDS grant recipients on planning the “Sugarcane” screening as a first step toward building relationships with Native American tribes in their states and communities.
“I was astounded with the amount of interest and support from across the country,” Tadgerson said in a written statement to ENS. “The biggest significance was the volume of [Episcopal] communities who are asking to be not only activated within truth-telling, restorative justice and healing efforts (native and non-native), but to learn what lasting and effective actions mean from allies while counteracting savior-syndrome complexes.”
The congregations hosting screenings have been able to plan “easy, symbolic, transformative and impactful efforts” in their communities, she said.
“I believe the church communities and leadership are doing the appropriate cultural competency work to prepare for responsible re-entry of relationship with the Tribes in their areas,” Tadgerson said. “This is a humble way to do very difficult work.”
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.