We Survived the Night

Journalist and documentarian NoiseCat’s ambitious debut ruminates on generational trauma and resilience among Indigenous communities in North America. The book opens with a night watchman’s horrific discovery at St. Joseph’s Mission, an Indian residential school in British Columbia: a Salish newborn, NoiseCat’s father, abandoned in the garbage, “the only known survivor of the school’s incinerator.” With this harrowing legacy at the heart of his narrative, NoiseCat traces his family’s history, including his father’s achievements as an artist and struggles with alcoholism, and reflects on Coyote Stories, the oral tradition centered on the famed trickster. This inventive combination generates moving parallels between myth and reality, particularly regarding the complicated relationships between fathers and sons—not only NoiseCat and his father, but also his grandfather Zeke, who fathered at least 19 children (“almost single-handedly bringing our people back from a genocide,” NoiseCat quips). However, the account loses some steam as NoiseCat switches in and out of straightforward reportage on issues like Deb Haaland’s historic appointment as first Native American secretary of the interior. While these sections are illuminating, they can feel lifted from another project. Still, NoiseCat’s attempt to cover as much territory as possible so that “these places, stories, and ancestors come full circle to carry us back to where we belong” results in a powerful archive of Indigenous pain and persistence. (Oct.)