A stunning narrative from one of the most powerful young writers at work todayWe Survived the Night interweaves oral history with hard-hitting journalism and a deeply personal father-son journey into a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence.

Julian Brave NoiseCats childhood was rich with culture and contradictions. When his Secwpemc and Statimc father, an artist haunted by a turbulent past, abandoned the family, he 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 fathers absence, NoiseCat immersed himself in Native history and culture to understand the man he seldom sawhis past, his story, where he came fromand, by extension, himself.

Years later, NoiseCat sets out across the continent to correct the erasure, invisibility, and misconceptions surrounding the First Peoples of this land, as he develops his voice as a storyteller and artist in his own right. Told in the style of a “Coyote Story,” a legend about the trickster forefather of NoiseCats people who was revered for his wit and mocked for his tendency to self-destruct, We Survived the Night brings a traditional artform nearly annihilated by colonization back to life on the page. Through a dazzling blend of history and mythology, memoir and reportage, NoiseCat unravels old stories and braids together new ones.

He grapples with the erasure of North America’s First Peoples and the trauma that cascades across generations, while illuminating the vital Indigenous cultural, environmental, and political movements reshaping the future. He chronicles the historic ascent of the first Native American cabinet secretary in the United States and the first Indigenous sovereign of Canada; probes the colonial origins and limits of racial ideology and Indian identity through the story of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina; and hauls the golden eggs of an imperiled fish out of the sea alongside the Tlingit of Sitka, Alaska. This is a rewriting and restorationof Native history and, more intimately, of family and self, as NoiseCat seeks to reclaim a culture effaced by colonization and reconcile with a father who left. Virtuosic, compelling, and deeply moving, this is at once an intensely personal journey and a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence.

Drawing from five years of on-the-ground reporting, We Survived the Night paints a profound and unforgettable portrait of contemporary Indigenous life, alongside an intimate and deeply powerful reckoning between a father and a son. Soulful, formally daring, indelible work from an important new voice.

Julian Brave Noisecat is a writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, champion powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history. His writing has appeared in dozens of publications, includingThe New York Times,The Washington Post, andThe New Yorker. NoiseCat has been recognized with numerous awards including the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize and many National Native Media Awards.He was a finalist for the Livingston Award and multiple Canadian National Magazine Awards, and was named to the TIME100 Next list in 2021. His first documentary,Sugarcane, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Directed alongside Emily Kassie,Sugarcanepremiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where NoiseCat and Kassie won the Directing Award in U.S. Documentary. NoiseCat is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsqscen and descendant of the Llwat Nation of Mount Currie.We Survived the Nightis his first book.

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publish Date: October 21, 2025
• Pages: 432
• Dimensions: 6.1 X 9.3 X 1.2 inches | 1.7 pounds
• Language: English
• Type: Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9780593320785
• BISAC Categories: Personal Memoirs, Cultural, Ethnic & Regional – Native American & Aboriginal