{"id":40011,"date":"2026-04-16T13:57:53","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T18:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/book-review-of-medicine-river-a-story-of-survival-and-the-legacy-of-indian-boarding-schools\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T13:57:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T18:57:58","slug":"book-review-of-medicine-river-a-story-of-survival-and-the-legacy-of-indian-boarding-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/book-review-of-medicine-river-a-story-of-survival-and-the-legacy-of-indian-boarding-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review of Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Mary<\/a><\/p>\n

Mary Annette Pember (Wisconsin Ojibwe), author of Medicine River<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I have read few books since becoming a writer\/editor for the West River Eagle. I spend considerable time doing research and reading many sources for the feature articles I write. This along with other commitments and responsibilities limits the time I devote to reading books.<\/p>\n

However, when I heard about the book Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools, by Mary Annette Pember (Pantheon Books, 2025), I ordered it and read it immediately.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a student of history since childhood, through my adolescence and college years, and throughout my adulthood. However, I knew absolutely nothing about Native American boarding schools until I heard in 2021 about the discovery of more than 200 unmarked graves on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada. This was just a few months after I began writing for the West River Eagle. I was horrified and shocked.<\/p>\n

My horror grew as I learned about the Native residential boarding school history in the United States. The great white fathers making policy for the U.S. from the mid-nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century decided that boarding schools were the perfect solution to what they called \u201cthe Indian problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of Native children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in order to destroy their culture and assimilate them into white, Christian, model citizens. Once located at the schools, which were typically overcrowded, underfunded, and understaffed, the children were forced to dress as children of European descent and were severely punished for speaking their first languages. They were also subjected to extreme abuse and neglect of every kind and forced to work menial jobs in terrible conditions.<\/p>\n

There was little to no supervision or accountability for the schools. Many children died at the schools without ever seeing their homes and families again. Those who survived the neglect and abuse were scarred for life.<\/p>\n

I have written numerous feature stories about the shameful policy of Native boarding schools in the U.S. Everything I have learned about the boarding school policy is painfully heartbreaking, but I will continue to learn and write about the subject as the story continues to unfold. It\u2019s a truth about U.S. history that must be told, so that legacy wounds can begin to heal and so that we can learn whatever hard lessons we must learn in order to never repeat such an atrocity.<\/p>\n

So, yes, when I heard of Medicine River, I immediately bought it and read it. The book certainly did add to my knowledge and understanding of the subject, which again was a painful but necessary process.<\/p>\n

The author of Medicine River is Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe. She is an independent journalist who has focused on Native American issues for 25 years. Pember has received numerous prestigious awards for her journalism and her work has appeared in such prestigious publications as the New York Times and The Atlantic, among others.<\/p>\n

Among the thousands of children sent to Native boarding schools was Mary Pember\u2019s mother, a tortured soul who parented her daughter from her brokenness. Without self-pity, Pember describes in eerie detail the way the mother\u2019s childhood experiences in boarding schools haunted not only the mother but her daughter, the author.<\/p>\n

According to Pember, \u201cQuantitative research indicates that disparities in mental health, addiction, and increased chronic physical conditions such as diabetes and cancer are connected to boarding school attendance among Native Americans. According to the Department of the Interior report as well as research by health professionals, cultural and familial disruption as well as physical and mental trauma experienced by generations of Indian people at boarding schools has contributed to intergenerational trauma that continues to plague Indigenous communities today.\u201d (Medicine River, page 13)<\/p>\n

Pember places her understandably ambivalent relationship with her mother in the larger context of the boarding school policy as a whole. She places the boarding school policy in the much larger context of the overall genocidal U.S. policy regarding Indigenous peoples beginning with the earliest European explorers, who, she writes, \u201c\u2026viewed America\u2019s Indigenous inhabitants as resources to be harvested, equivalent to the lands, gold, and other riches they sought in New World. Indigenous people were there for the taking, as slaves and forced converts to Christianity.\u201d (Medicine River, page 26)<\/p>\n

Pember brilliantly describes the unholy alliance of the Christian religious leaders and the avaricious political powers who colluded in the destruction of Native American life and culture. Her facts are well-documented and irrefutable. Again, this is a story that must be told, even if it causes great shame and embarrassment to descendants of European colonizers.<\/p>\n

Pember is a masterful researcher\/history detective and storyteller. I would highly recommend this book to any student of U.S. history and particularly to students of Native American history. I would also highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject of intergenerational trauma.<\/p>\n

As an editor I cannot overlook the fact that many of her paragraphs could be more appropriately divided into several. I would also wish that her endnotes (which I did not discover until I had read the entire text) had been formatted as footnotes at the bottom of each page.<\/p>\n

I finished the book also wishing she had included a graphic of her family tree, which would have been very useful as she described at length her extended family relationships \u2013 then I discovered the family tree among the very first pages of the book. I\u2019m not sure how I managed to overlook it.<\/p>\n

In spite of these minor frustrations, my overall opinion of this work is that it is a great addition to the literature shedding light on the boarding school era and its ongoing tale of trauma, shame, and resilience. Yes, resilience.<\/p>\n

When we consider that Native Americans have survived all efforts, including the boarding school policy, to completely erase them, we are left to marvel at the resilience, creativity, strength, and spirituality of First Peoples. Those of any cultural heritage can learn many priceless lessons from our Native American relatives, if we are teachable.<\/p>\n

The post Book review of Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools<\/a> first appeared on Native Sun News Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/div>

Mary Annette Pember (Wisconsin Ojibwe), author of Medicine River I have read few books since becoming a writer\/editor for the West River Eagle. I spend considerable time doing research and reading many sources for the feature articles I write. This along with other commitments and responsibilities limits the time I <\/p>\n

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