Author Talks: Julian Brave NoiseCat

Join Pioneer Works and Greenlight Bookstore for the official launch of Julian Brave NoiseCat’s We Survived the Night—a stunning debut that interweaves oral history and hard-hitting journalism with the deeply personal journey of the writer behind this urgent portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence.

Julian Brave NoiseCat’s childhood was rich with culture and contradictions. When his Secwépemc and St’at’imc father, an artist haunted by a turbulent past, abandoned the family, NoiseCat and his non-Native mother were embraced by the urban Native community in Oakland, California, as well as by family on the Canim Lake Indian Reserve in British Columbia. In his father’s absence, NoiseCat immersed himself in Native history and culture to understand the man he seldom saw—his past, his story, where he came from—and, by extension, himself. So doing, he came to write a book that’s told in the style of a “Coyote Story,” a legend about the trickster forefather of NoiseCat’s people who was revered for his wit and mocked for his tendency to self-destruct. We Survived the Night brings a traditional art form nearly annihilated by colonization back to life on the page–and comprises an indispensable new account of contemporary Indigenous life.

This special launch event, co-presented by Pioneer Works and Greenlight Bookstore, will feature a conversation between Julian Brave Noisecat and Sky Hopinka, with music by Laura Ortman and other special performances for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Tickets with a copy of We Survived the Night included are available. Books will also be for sale at the event, which will feature a book signing with Julian Brave NoiseCat.

Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, champion powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker, and he was named to the TIME100 Next list in 2021. His film Sugarcane, directed alongside Emily Kassie, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. NoiseCat is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq̓éscen̓ and descendant of the Líl̓wat Nation of Mount Currie. We Survived the Night is his first book.

Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) is a filmmaker, video artist, and photographer developing new forms of cinema that center the perspectives of Indigenous people. He was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and Palm Springs, California, and he has studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His award-winning work has appeared at leading festivals and in museums around the world, and he was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022. Currently he is a professor in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University.

Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) is a musician, artist, composer, and vibrant collaborator across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. A former music resident at Pioneer Works, she has performed at the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, MOMA, La Biennale di Venezia (2024), and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among countless other established and DIY venues around the world. In 2008, she founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Indigenous orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’ In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Indigenous cast.

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is Director of Publishing at Pioneer Works and the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Pioneer Works Broadcast. A geographer and writer, he teaches at NYU and writes for The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, among many other publications. His books include Island People, Names of New York, and, with Rebecca Solnit, Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas.

This program is part of PW Broadcast's Author Talks, a series highlighting authors and thinkers across disciplines.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn, United States