We Survived the Night

Downloadable audio file

An Indigenous Reckoning

'Written in gorgeous, sparse prose, We Survived the Night reads like a novel. [...] A book I've been waiting my whole life to read.' Tommy Orange, author of There There

As an infant, Julian Brave NoiseCat's father was found abandoned in a dumpster. Against all odds, he survived and made it out of his impoverished reservation only to abandon his own son. As a young man, NoiseCat embarks on an unforgettable journey into his family's past and his people's present.

Told in the style of a 'Coyote Story', an art form nearly annihilated by colonization, this dazzling blend of history and mythology, memoir and reportage unravels old stories and braids together new ones. NoiseCat grapples with the erasure of North America's First Peoples and the trauma that cascades across generations, and illuminates the vital Indigenous cultural, environmental and political movements that are reshaping the future. Virtuosic, compelling and deeply moving, this is at once an intensely personal journey and a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love and resurgence.