Mary Annette Pember > Quotes

“The missionaries were unable to grasp the nuanced Indigenous relationship with the divine since it was so unlike the structured, institutional nature of Christianity. Native spirituality, embedded in everyday life, didn’t represent an authentic religion to the Jesuits. The missionaries and other Christians dismissed the tribes’ spiritual ways as meritless or, worse, as products of the devil.”
― Mary Annette Pember, Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

“Long ago, our ancestors understood that the brain is driven to tell stories and passed along our culture and traditions in that way. For instance, older people like to tell stories over and over again, and young children like to hear stories repeated often. There is a lock-and-key mechanism for transmission of oral culture across generations.”
― Mary Annette Pember, Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

“Most Americans believe we live in a meritocracy, but for Native folks it was more like a demeritocracy: everything was a strike against you.”
― Mary Annette Pember, Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools