Sugarcane Helena Community Screening Discussion Guide & Resources

The Friendship Center
Jan 15
10 min read

Updated: Jan 29

As a follow-up to our 2026 Helena community screening of Sugarcane, check out some discussion questions and resources for continued conversation and action around repair and healing.

As part of our Helena community screening of Sugarcane, we offer the following from the Sugarcane Film Faith Community Conversation Guide for those willing to keep the conversation going among their congregations or their own community groups. We hope these shared opportunities deepen our understanding and courage as we work toward repair and healing.

We'll continue to update the RESOURCES section of this guide, so be sure to bookmark this blog post for more recommendations!

You may also use the download button below to access a PDF version of the guide last updated and expanded January 23, 2026.

DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE

DISUCSSION QUESTIONS

Reflecting on the Story

How are you feeling? (Try to be specific in naming feelings and where you might be feeling them in your body.)
Which people in the story did you find yourself resonating with and why?
What moments of the film are “sticking out” powerfully to you and why?
Were there any moments where you experienced tension, disengagement, or skepticism?
Were there any moments that challenged your previous understanding about boarding schools? What were they? What new understanding is taking its place?
Were there any moments that challenged your previous notions about the Church and its role in boarding schools? What were those moments and what new understanding is taking its place?
Were there any moments that challenged your previous notions about Indigenous communities? What were those moments and what new understanding is taking its place?
Community
- What makes experiencing trauma as a community different from an individual experience?
- How did the community find ways to come together to support each other?
Healing
- How does talking about traumatic experiences seem to impact survivors?
- What did intergenerational trauma look like in the film?
- How can younger generations encourage or support healing?
Accountability
- What does accountability look like in this film?
- Who needs to be held accountable?
- How should they be held accountable and by who?
- Who showed signs of accountability? Who didn’t?
- What is the role of apologies and acknowledgement? Do they matter?
Beyond Dialogue
- What actions—big or small—do we see from survivors in the film?
- What can we do to hold institutions accountable?
- What do you think survivors are owed?
- Should faith communities and U.S. government engage in conversations on reparations?
- The residential and boarding school system nearly annihilated native languages, do they have a responsibility to fund their revitalization?
  How can we support Indigenous communities doing this work?

Connecting the Dots

Many Indigenous activists and scholars refer to boarding schools as kidnapping and cultural genocide sanctioned by the U.S. Government and carried out by Christian institutions. What does that description bring up for you?
What examples of immoral and unjust laws or policies were present in the story? What are other times when you’ve seen people or institutions perpetuating or complying with structural racism and violence? How have you stood up against such things in the past?
How do you think displacement from land and family impacts a culture’s survival? The land’s wellbeing? How does intergenerational trauma carried within families impact a community’s ability to fight back against further land loss, predatory economic actors, domestic violence or other “social ills”?

Taking Action

How can your religious community take part in repairing the wrongs of boarding schools, land theft, and the attempted genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples?
What Indigenous liberation struggles are happening in the region where you live? (If your answer is “there aren’t any Indigenous people where I live”, you probably need to check other sources! This website is a good place to start: native-land.ca
Does your community have influence in schools and education systems? How can you fight for Indigenous representation and authorship in the educational curriculum tied to land, place and history?
Does your community have resources that could be directed towards local Indigenous initiatives, land recovery, or a voluntary Native land tax?
If you own land, might there be burial sites that Indigenous communities on the property should know about? Has your community ever checked?
If your community was involved in any boarding schools (see list of boarding schools in Montana below), might your community have information that’s important to boarding school survivors or their descendants located somewhere in your archives? Has your community reached out to the Tribal Historic Preservation Officers for those tribal nations to let them know? Who might you contact to learn more about these specific schools?

RESOURCES

Indigenous communities across Montana, nationwide, and throughout western colonized countries have been impacted by the intergenerational harm of policies that forcibly separated children from their families and communities. The latest research from National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has identified 526 Indian boarding schools in the US, 125 of which are still open today.

The Indian boarding school system is one colonial policy that has been used by the US government to undermine tribal sovereignty and erode traditional governance and family structures. It’s important to understand how this legacy relates to contemporary issues like Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (aka MMIP/MMIWG) and policies like the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). It’s also important to learn from and support Indigenous-led efforts dedicated to healing, culturally safe/relevant practices, and strengthening Native communities.

List of Indian Boarding Schools in Montana (^ indicates school is still open)

Blackfeet Agency Boarding and Day School (Blackfeet Dormitory*) ^
Crow Agency Boarding School
Crow Mission School
Flathead Agency Boarding and Day School
Fort Belknap Boarding and Day School
Fort Peck Agency Boarding School (Poplar Creek Boarding School)
Fort Shaw Government Industrial Indian School
Holy Family Mission and School (Holy Family Industrial School)
Montana Industrial School for Indians (Bond’s Mission School)
Northern Cheyenne Tribal School ^
Pryor Creek Boarding School
St. Charles Mission School ^
St. Ignatius Mission and School (Academy of the Holy Family for Young Ladies, Flathead Agency Boy’s Boarding, Flathead Agency Girls’ Boarding)
St. Labre Indian Mission Boarding School (St. Labre at Busby; St. Labre Indian School) ^
St. Paul Mission and Boarding School
St. Peter Mission School
St. Xavier Mission School (Pretty Eagle Catholic Academy) ^
Tongue River Boarding School (Busby Indian School)
Willow Creek Boarding School
Wolf Point Mission Boarding and Day School

Learn more and take action in your community

Visit the program page for Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies-MT’s Native American Initiatives. You can also request a Cultural Safety Toolkit created by Dr. Amy Stiffarm (Aaniiih, Chippewa Cree, Blackfeet) to help those who provide care or work with families during the perinatal period.
Support Native-owned businesses in your community, like Sage & Oats in Downtown Helena! Sage & Oats is an intercultural gift shop carrying lots of handmade items from Native makers, a variety of Native-authored books for all ages, smudge kit supplies, and more.
Visit the Last Chance Community Pow Wow website to sign up for updates about our annual powwow here in Helena! Powwows are an excellent time for communities to come together and celebrate Indigenous traditions of dance, music, and storytelling.
Visit the new Montana Heritage Center in Helena and notice how Indigenous stories are incorporated throughout the new museum, with features like a smudge room and a circular exhibit representing an intertribal round dance welcoming visitors from the east entrance.
Scroll to the bottom of this blog post for a list of eight ways non-Indigenous people can engage with the process of reconciliation from one of our fantastic screening panelists, Louise Ogemahgeshig Fischer (Anishinaabe). Thank you, Louise, for permission to include scans of your original notes!

Maps and reports

Check out an interactive Digital Map of Indian Boarding Schools in North America created by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) in partnership with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.
Check out a PDF version of the NABS list and map
Check out the key findings from the 2022 report and subsequent 2024 report published by the US Bureau of Indian Affairs about the historical and current day impacts of federal Indian boarding school policies in the US and find a link to the full report.

Suggested books

Links provided below are for Montana Book Company in Helena. If you're in a community with a different local bookseller or, if your community has a Native-owned business that can order books, we always encourage readers to support those small businesses!

A Council of Dolls (2023) by Mona Susan Power (Standing Rock Sioux) This novel shines a light on the damage wrought by Indian boarding schools, and the historical massacres of Indigenous people, through the stories of three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women and the dolls they carried.
The Seed Keeper (2021) by Diane Wilson (Dakota) A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family's struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.
Young adult fiction by award-winning author Angeline Boulley (Ojibwe) highlights issues like MMIP/MMIW and government policies like NAGPRA and ICWA.
The Cheyenne Story (2019) by Gerry Robinson (Northern Cheyenne) What should a man do when the army sends him to help kill his wife's family? Robinson reaches back through time to unravel the emotional and complex story in a historical fiction account of his great-great grandfather, and the events that led to the beginning of the Northern Cheyenne’s exile from their homelands in southeastern Montana and northern Wyoming. (Available at Sage & Oats in Helena!)
We Survived the Night (2025) by Julian Brave NoiseCat (Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen) The Sugarcane co-director uses the style of Interior Salish Coyote tales to interweave oral history, hard-hitting journalism, and a deeply personal father-son journey into a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence in his debut book.
Becoming Little Shell (2024) by Chris La Tray (Little Shell) Chris La Tray embarks on a journey into his family's past, along the way uncovering the larger and more complicated history of the diaspora of Métis people—many of whom are now members of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. After a 158-year-long struggle to obtain official recognition from the federal government, the Little Shell Tribe became the 574th federally recognized tribe in the US in 2019. If you heard Helena’s own Dan Pocha (Little Shell) speak at our screening, and are now curious to learn more about how the Little Shell experience is both similar to that of tribes moved to reservations under 19th century treaty negotiations, while also being very unique as a people who were historically considered "landless," this award-winning book is a great starting place.

Suggested podcasts

Stolen Season 2: Surviving St. Michael's (2022) In the second season of the Pulitzer Award-winning podcast, Connie Walker (Okanese Cree) investigates her own family’s experience of sexual violence while attending St. Michael’s, a residential school operated until 1982 by the Roman Catholic Church in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan.
“Biden Apologized and the Women That Made It Happen” (2024) All My Relations co-hosts Matika Wilbur (Swinomish, Tulalip) and Temryss Lane (Lummi) highlight the incredible Native women at the forefront of the efforts to bring about President Biden’s 2024 apology for the harm caused by the federal Indian boarding school system.
“Indian Boarding Schools with Marsha Small” (2021) Marsha Small (Northern Cheyenne) joins the Extreme History Project’s The Dirt on the Past to discuss her work locating unmarked graves in boarding school cemeteries using ground penetrating radar, GPS, and GIS, along with the work she has been doing to establish protocols to document boarding school cemeteries.

Suggested film, television, and media

Powwow Highway (1989) directed by Jonathan Wacks The road-movie genre gets a lyrical twist shot through with Native American spirituality in this bittersweet portrait of two Cheyenne men on a journey through the American West and their own identities.
Smoke Signals (1998) directed by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne, Arapahoe) Victor and Thomas take a journey to collect the ashes of Victor's estranged, alcoholic father in this coming-of-age story about identity, family forgiveness, and challenging stereotypes, told through a humorous road trip.
Reservation Dogs (2021-2023) created by Sterlin Harjo (Seminole, Muscogee) and Taika Waititi (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui Māori) This critically-acclaimed comedy series follows the exploits of four Indigenous teens (known mononymously to their aunties and uncles as “shitasses”) in rural Oklahoma.
Fancy Dance (2023) directed by Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga) Since her sister's disappearance, Jax has cared for her niece, Roki, by scraping by on their reservation in Oklahoma. Every spare minute goes into finding her missing sister while also helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow.
Daughter of a Lost Bird (2020) directed by Brooke Pepion Swaney (Blackfeet, Salish) This documentary follows Kendra, an adult Native adoptee, as she reconnects with her birth family, discovers her Lummi heritage, and confronts issues of her own identity. Her story echoes many affected by ICWA and the Indian Adoption Project.
Playing for the World: 1904 Fort Shaw Indian Girls' Basketball Team (2010) produced by Montana PBS, narrated by Tantoo Cardinal (Cree, Métis) The Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School, located in the Sun River Valley north of Helena, was one of the first schools in Montana to feature basketball as a recreational sport for girls. This PBS documentary, first aired in 2009, shines light on the earliest organized game of women’s basketball played in the state. The 1904 team from Fort Shaw was invited to play exhibition games at the St. Louis World’s Fair, where they defeated all their opponents. If you attended our screening of Sugarcane, you learned that both Major Robinson (Northern Cheyenne) and Dan Pocha (Little Shell) had ancestors who were members of that world champion girls’ basketball team! But, as both were quick to point out, the sobering reality of the story is that when the Fort Shaw girls weren’t playing, they were on display as part of the World Fair's Indian School Exhibit Hall.
Sounds of Survivance | Airs Saturdays, 8-10 AM MST, worldwide through KEXP's livestream with episodes available to stream for two weeks after each broadcast Last but not least, consider getting to know the work of Indigenous artists through their incredible music! Cohosted by DJs Kevin Sur (Kānaka Maoli) and Tory J (Quinault), Sounds of Survivance features the languages and music of Indigenous people from across the globe, amplifying collective sovereignty over the way Native people sound with everything from the classics like Redbone and Link Wray alongside today’s innovators like Dead Pioneers (Pyramid Lake Paiute), Black Belt Eagle Scout (Swinomish, Iñupiaq), Samantha Crain (Choctaw), and Montana’s very own Supaman (Apsáalooke/Crow). As Major said following our screening, Indigenous people have always been capable of telling their own stories—music is one exciting place where they’re doing exactly that.

SUPPORT TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND HEALING

National Native American Boarding School Coalition (NABS)

NABS was created to develop and implement a national strategy that increases public awareness and cultivates healing for the profound trauma experienced by individuals, families, communities, and American Indian and Alaska Native Nations resulting from the US adoption and implementation of the Boarding School Policy of 1869. Visit the NABS website to learn more and consider making a donation.

Berry Medicine

Supporting Indigenous-led birthwork is a powerful way to promote healing from colonial policies that separated children from their communities and prevented Native Peoples from transmitting essential cultural knowledge and practicing traditional forms of healing. Berry Medicine is Montana’s first Indigenous-led birthwork nonprofit, working to reclaim traditional knowledge, build Indigenous leadership, and advance birth justice in Tribal and urban Native communities across Montana. Their work supports Indigenous BirthWorkers and community leaders in addressing maternal health disparities through culturally grounded care, organizing, and policy change.

Berry Medicine is fiscally sponsored by Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies. Visit their Native American Initiatives program page to learn more and consider making a donation (note “Berry Medicine” in the comment field to let them know where to direct your support!).