Julian Brave NoiseCat

Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, filmmaker and student of Salish art and history. His first documentary, SUGARCANE, directed alongside Emily Kassie, follows an investigation into abuse and missing children at the Indian residential school NoiseCat’s family was sent to near Williams Lake, British Columbia. SUGARCANE premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where they won the Directing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition. The film was acquired by National Geographic Documentary Films and will screen at film festivals ahead of a limited theatrical run and streaming release on Disney+.

Julian is concurrently finishing his first book, We Survived the Night, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in North America, Profile Books in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, Albin Michel in France and Aufbau Verlag in Germany.

His journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker and has been recognized with many awards including the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, which honors “excellence in long-form, narrative or deep reporting on stories about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the present American landscape.” In 2021, Julian was named to the TIME100 Next list of emerging leaders alongside the starting point guard of his fantasy basketball team, Luka Doncic.

Before turning full-time to writing and filmmaking, Julian was a political strategist, policy analyst and cultural organizer. In 2019, he helped lead a grassroots effort to bring an Indigenous canoe journey to San Francisco Bay to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation. Eighteen canoes representing communities from as far north as Canada and as far west as Hawaii participated in the journey, which was covered by dozens of local and national media outlets, including The New York Times. In 2020, he was the first to publicly suggest that Deb Haaland should be appointed Interior Secretary. Working with leaders from Indian Country as well as the progressive and environmental movements, Julian helped turn the idea into a sophisticated inside-outside campaign that drew support from celebrities, activists and even a few conservative politicians. When Haaland was sworn in she became the first Native American cabinet secretary in United States history.

Raised in a single-mother household in Oakland, California, Julian is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen and a descendant of the Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie. He has played hockey for three of the oldest teams in the game: Columbia University, the Oxford University Blues and the Alkali Lake Braves. A champion traditional dancer, his powwow prize winnings include a horse.

As a 2024 Writer-at-the-Edge, Julian wrote:

“The Mesa Refuge will always have a special place in my heart because it’s where I finished the first draft of my first book, We Survived the Night, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2025. Kamala told us we would get more writing done at the refuge than we anticipated. I didn’t believe her and then there I was, two days before the end of my residency with a full first draft of my book.”