We Survived the Night

'A powerful, beautiful, wrenching masterpiece ... both a memoir and something that reaches far beyond the personal'' REBECCA SOLNIT, author of HOPE IN THE DARK
'The book I've been waiting my whole life to read' TOMMY ORANGE, author of the Booker longlisted WANDERING STARS
'A story that must be told' KATHLEEN DUVAL, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of NATIVE NATIONS
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"In my people's language, we greet each other each morning by saying "Tsecwínucw-k: 'You survived the night"'
One dark night, a new-born is discovered dumped inside a waste incinerator. The boy, rescued from death, grows into a man who will in turn abandon his own children, including his first-born son Julian Brave NoiseCat.
Behind this father-son story lies an even darker history of abuse, colonialism and vicious attempts to erase North America's First Peoples from their land. Told in the style of a 'Coyote Story', a legend of the trickster forefather of NoiseCat's people, We Survived the Night brings a vanishing artform back to life in this dazzling account of contemporary Indigenous North America. Braiding on-the-ground reportage together with intimate experience, history with mythology, NoiseCat grapples with trauma that cascades across generations to uncover truths about himself, his family and his people - how they survived and how, through vital political, environmental and cultural movements, they are coming back.
An inventive, illuminating and moving narrative from one of the most compelling artists at work today, We Survived the Night is both reconciliation and celebration of Indigenous pain, hope and resurgence - and their power to shape a collective future.
Here is an unforgettable journey of restoration through father-son ties and historic reckoning of Indigenous people, announcing a major new literary talent.

Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and champion powwow dancer. His award-winning journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and New Yorker. He is the co-director of Sugarcane, which won the Sundance Film FestivalGrand Jury award for Directing and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film. NoiseCat is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen and descendant of the Lil'Wat Nation of Mount Currie. We Survived the Night is his first book.