EXCLUSIVE: Leonardo DiCaprio and his production outfit Appian Way have joined Shannon Kring’s investigative documentary Nine Little Indians about abuses at a U.S. boarding school for Native American children.
Almost a decade in the making, and currently in post-production, the film will recount the harrowing story of the nine Charbonneau sisters and their childhood schoolmates who endured horrific abuse at St. Paul’s Indian Mission School in Marty, South Dakota.
Produced by The Revenant and Killers Of The Flower Moon outfit Appian Way, Red Queen Media, and Terra Mater Studios, the documentary will chronicle the Charbonneau sisters’ nearly two-decade-long legal battle to hold the Catholic Church accountable for the heinous crimes inflicted upon the plaintiffs listed on their lawsuit, the survivors unwilling to be named, and the children who had perished at St. Paul’s—among them, Geraldine “Gerri” Charbonneau’s baby conceived in rape. It also follows a Northern Cheyenne Indian school cemetery surveyor’s search for additional unmarked graves at the school. Among the film’s interviewees are two former nuns at the school and the abbot who supervised several of the priests accused of rape and murder.
Filmmaker Kring, best known for documentary End Of The Line: The Women Of Standing Rock, first turned her cameras on the story in 2016, when tribal members invited her to document the discovery of skeletal remains of missing children that had been unearthed during construction at the still-operational school. Above and below are first stills from the feature.
American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the U.S. from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of “civilizing” Native American children into Anglo-American culture. The institutions were recently featured in Paramount’s 1923 series and previously in Wes Studi’s 2009 Sundance feature The Only Good Indian.
Author and public speaker Tony Robbins is also joining the project as an executive producer alongside DiCaprio, Jennifer Davisson, Phillip Watson, George DiCaprio, Marc Gerke, Sophia Ehrnrooth, Walter Köhler, and Wolfgang Knöpfler.
“We are delighted to partner with Tony Robbins and Shannon Kring on this profound film, which sheds light onto the egregious crimes that took place at St. Paul’s Indian Mission School,” Appian Way’s President Of Production Jennifer Davisson said. “We hope this documentary honors the surviving victims and those who tragically perished at the hands of the people who were supposed to protect them the most.”
Kring commented: “Over the past two decades, I’ve been entrusted with hundreds of hours of searing testimony on the effects of colonization. Always, the most tragic stories can be traced to the Indian boarding school system—an extension of the Great American Land Grab and thus a tool of genocide. It is time that we as a nation atone for this horror of the not-so-distant past.”
Tony Robbins added: “It is an honor to produce this film alongside Shannon Kring and Leonardo DiCaprio, and to have spent time with the Charbonneau sisters and their classmates in South Dakota. Their stories outraged me and are a testament to the unbowed courage and resilience of our country’s original inhabitants. I hope that Nine Little Indians inspires you as much as the St. Paul’s Indian Mission School survivors have inspired me.”
Nine Little Indians
Nine Little Indians
