Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, filmmaker, champion powwow dancer and student of Salish art and history.

NoiseCat’s first book, We Survived the Night, a portrait of contemporary Indigenous life beginning with the familial and expanding outwards from there through a contemporary retelling of the Coyote epic, was an instant national bestseller in Canada and an indie bestseller in the United States. The book even reached #1 for hardcover nonfiction in Oklahoma and Portland, Maine. (Thank Creator for Indians and readers and Indian readers!) The book was published by Alfred A. Knopf and Penguin Random House Canada as well as by Profile Books in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth in October 2025, with translations forthcoming from Albin Michel in France, Aufbau Verlag in Germany, Iperborea in Italy, and Libros del Asteroide in Spain. We Survived the Night was a Fall/Summer Indies Introduce pick and selected by Ananand Giriharadas’ The Ink Book Club and Roxane Gay’s The Audacious Book Club. The debut received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Library Journal and was named to The New Yorker’s running list of “The Best Books of The Year So Far,” NPR’s “Books We Love,” and Audible’s “15 best nonfiction listens of 2025.” (Long live orality!)

NoiseCat’s journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker and has been recognized with many awards including the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, which honors “excellence in long-form, narrative or deep reporting on stories about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the present American landscape.” In 2021, NoiseCat was named to the TIME100 Next list of emerging leaders alongside the starting point guard of his fantasy basketball team, Luka Doncic.

Before turning full-time to writing and filmmaking, NoiseCat was a political strategist, policy analyst and cultural organizer. In 2019, he helped lead a grassroots effort to bring an Indigenous canoe journey to San Francisco Bay to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation. Eighteen canoes representing communities from as far north as Canada and as far west as Hawaii participated in the journey, which was covered by dozens of local and national media outlets, including The New York Times. In 2020, he was the first to publicly suggest that Deb Haaland should be appointed Interior Secretary. Working with leaders from Indian Country as well as the progressive and environmental movements, NoiseCat helped turn the idea into a sophisticated inside-outside campaign that drew support from celebrities, activists and even a few conservative politicians. When Haaland was sworn in she became the first Native American cabinet secretary in United States history.

Raised in a single-mother household in Oakland, California, Julian is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen and a descendant of the Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie. He has played hockey for three of the oldest teams in the game: Columbia University, the Oxford University Blues and the Alkali Lake Braves. A champion traditional dancer, his powwow prize winnings include a horse.