From the mid-nineteenth century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their tribal communities to attend boarding schools whose stated aim was to “save the Indian” by way of assimilation. In reality, these boarding schools—sponsored by the U.S. government, but often run by various religious orders with little regulation—were a calculated attempt to dismantle tribes by pulling apart Native families. Children were beaten for speaking their Native languages; denied food, clothing, and comfort; and forced to work menial jobs in terrible conditions, all while deprived of love and affection.
In her debut book, Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools, Ojibwe journalist Mary Annette Pember highlights the experiences of students at such schools, and the effect it had on their families, and their children, and even the author’s own mother, who was sent to a boarding school in northern Wisconsin at age five. The result is a stark but hopeful portrait of communities still reckoning with the trauma of acculturation, religion, and abuse sponsored by the state.
Mary Annette Pember is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe. She’s worked as an independent journalist focusing on Native American issues since 2000 and is a national correspondent for ICT News, formerly Indian Country Today. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among other publications. Medicine River is her first book.
