Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

by Mary Annette Pember

A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture.

From the mid-19th century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their families to attend boarding schools that claimed to help create opportunity for these children to pursue professions outside their communities and otherwise "assimilate" into American life. In reality, these boarding schools—sponsored by the US Government but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation—were an insidious attempt to destroy tribes, break up families, and stamp out the traditions of generations of Native people.  Children were beaten for speaking their native languages, forced to complete menial tasks in terrible conditions, sometimes starved or raped, and utterly deprived of love and affection.

Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother was forced to attend one of these institutions—a seminary in Wisconsin, and the impacts of her experience have cast a pall over Mary's own childhood, and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark portrait of communities still reckoning with the legacy of acculturation that has affected generations of Native communities. Through searing interviews and assiduous historical reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of a culture whose country has been seemingly intent upon destroying it.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Indigenous, Memoir, Native American, Audiobook, American History

304 pages, Hardcover

Published April 22, 2025

Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a fan of critiquing books where the story is so personal and visceral to the author. In the case of Medicine River by Mary Annette Pember, the specter of horrific abuse at Native American boarding schools permeates the entire narrative. It is certainly not a question if the abuse and cultural erasure occurred; it certainly did. However, I wish Pember chose to focus on one aspect instead of trying to cover multiple aspects of the story in a very short page count.

Pember frames the story around her relationship with her mother. Her mother was sent to a seminary in Wisconsin and it was as bad as you would expect. However, Pember will also go off on tangents mid-chapter to cover sometimes hundreds of years of history. These tangents are often oversimplified or littered with unsupported claims. She will then veer back to her mother's story or sprinkle the text with random acts of abuse to other people. It means the reader is caught playing catch up (or is distracted by random history summaries) instead of being able to fully comprehend the horrors these Native children suffered. In trying to have both a broader story-line mixed with a personal one, the reader is left with not enough of either.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and the publisher.)

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I hope everyone reads. Part memoir and part history of Indian Boarding Schools in the U.S. If you are from Wisconsin, I especially encourage you to read this as there is a lot of Wisconsin history here that we are not taught. The way the author weaves in her own family story with the history really makes you face the brutality and trauma that she and so many families experienced. The legacy aspect of these schools, how families have been affected for generations and continue to feel the affects of these schools is really felt in these pages- especially given that governments continue to deny the true horrors and trauma they inflicted.
I read an advanced copy that is full of highlights, I would often stop and read passages to my partner. A harrowing book and a necessary book for everyone to read to learn about this history. This book was in my top ten nonfiction reads for 2024.

This book is out in April, it's such an important book, request it from your library! Thank you Pantheon for the advanced reader copy.

[Anita Pomerantz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an important one in the sense that it provides a detailed historical perspective on Indian boarding schools and their impacts upon native Americans. It's clearly a very well researched endeavor. The tone is very academic though despite the fact that a significant part of the book is personal. I was anticipating a book more like Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City which addresses a social justice issue and uses storytelling to bring it to life. The first 10 or so pages of this book lived up to that promise, but unfortunately after that, it seemed more like a doctoral dissertation. Some extremely harrowing scenes are described in the book, but they are written in an arms length way, as if by an outsider. It just didn't feel like a memoir where the reader can literally feel the depth of the emotion. That being said, if you are a lover of history, this book does an excellent job of explaining the scope and depth of the injustices perpetrated against native American Indians in a factual manner with tons of footnotes so it's clear where the information originated.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intensely personal history of the Native American boarding schools of the US and Canada.

This was a heart-wrenching book: a story of forced assimilation and annihilation. The children taken to the boarding schools were subjected to countless horrors—forbidden to speak their language, abuse both physical and sexual, hard labor and sickness. If they did not die in the schools, they were sent back to their communities, bringing tuberculosis and other diseases to their unprotected families.

And yet, it is a story of resilience and resistance. Of reclamation and recounting.

Native American communities are embracing their culture, refusing to be ignored or destroyed.

There isn't a happy ending, not by far. The story of genocide isn't one that ends happily. But it can have some form of healing, and, as Pember notes, the healing comes from within the community and the culture.

[Sylvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has only a few ratings so far but it seems I’m an outlier. I had mixed feelings about this book. I’ve read a little about the horrible mission schools over the years, including a bio of Jim Thorpe and I find that too many statistics can be meaningless but the personal stories are priceless since this book is a mixture of the personal and historical I found that the sections about her families stories and the stories of others were very powerful but there were times that I felt the author wanted to name every activist, every treaty and too many details because she had done all the research. I understand the temptation, but it was almost like two books…a memoir and an exhaustive history. I enjoyed one and not so much the other

[♡Heather✩Brown♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oof! A comprehensive look at all the damage colonization has caused and continues to cause. The generational trauma it’s caused. It just erks me when groups of people use God as their excuse to do horrendous things to people. Yes, that’s exactly what God wanted you to do. (Sarcasm) It had nothing to do with your own greed, power, etc. (More sarcasm)

A hard but important read. May we learn something so that no family has to ever live life this way.

While I could focus on all the horrible treatment children were exposed to - it makes me angry, sad, - at the these schools, what really stuck with me was their resilience, the ways they found to survive - determined to fight back in any little way they could. Pig Latin, etc.

It was also eye opening that the children gave grace to their parents - due to their traumas they weren’t allowed to be the parents they would have probably been had it not been for these schools.

I also thought about the purpose of all schools - it’s essentially a place we go to be trained on how to be the type of citizen this country wants.

While this is a horrible injustice, it goes to show that you cannot crush the human spirit. They held on to everything the white men tried to take from them.

[Makayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part personal family memior and part history book, Pember did a fantastic job weaving together the horrors of residential schools past into the present day reality of how that trauma still lingers in its survivors and even their children today.

Would recommend.

[Isabel Rodriguez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part memoir, part investigative journalism. The memoir portions are heartbreaking, yet confusing, due to Pember’s continuous flip-flopping in chronology. The historical information, while well-researched, bogs down the fluidity of the book, incorporates too many names and statistics, and is repetitive, at times.

[Robert Alexander Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️ Disappointing and unfocused

I wanted to like Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools by Mary Annette Pember, but it did not come together the way I hoped. The book tries to be both a historical account of Indigenous experiences in the United States and a personal memoir of the author’s own life and family, yet it never fully succeeds at either. Because she focused on so many different directions, each part ended up feeling reduced.

The historical sections about the treatment of Native Americans and the boarding school system were fascinating. I found myself wanting more of that, more depth, more exploration. But every time the story shifted into the author’s personal reflections, the momentum stalled. Her personal story is interesting and heartfelt, but it felt misplaced here.

If Pember had chosen to write either a history book or a true memoir, it might have been far more powerful. As it stands, it is an important topic handled with good intentions but without enough focus to make it truly engaging.

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you stay up until 3:30 am reading it, because you can't stop, it gets 5 stars. Daaaaamn.

[Steph | bookedinsaigon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Pantheon Books and NetGalley for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

Be forewarned going in that this is approximately 65% personal family stories and 35% historical research. As a result, my expectations were a bit mismatched with reality.

The backbone of MEDICINE RIVER is the story of Pember’s own mother, Bernice, who along with most of her siblings, was forced to attend an Indian “boarding school,” and suffered emotional trauma and PTSD for the rest of her life. Bernice’s story is not unique, but rather just one in thousands of similar stories of Indian children and communities who underwent similar horrifying experiences, some less than 100 years ago.

Anything you thought you knew about the schools’ horrific treatment of Indian children, the reality was worse. Besides cutting their hair upon arrival and giving them English names, school staff also washed students’ mouths with lye soap when they were caught speaking Native languages. Schooling came secondary to labor; indeed, often the students were “hired out” to perform menial labor for well-off white families in a system not unlike indentured servitude or today’s carceral system in the US.

Living conditions in the boarding schools were so poor and unhygienic that students often caught terminable illnesses, such as tuberculosis. Sometimes sick students were sent back to their families/communities, who, having no immunity to these diseases, often sicked and died themselves, thus becoming victims of epidemiological genocide. What’s worse is that, while we have heard of the terrible numbers of students who died in these boarding schools, that number does not include sick students who were sent home to die, nor those in their communities who caught the same disease and also died as a result.

Pember also shows the generational impact of these boarding schools on Indians today. Bernice has emotional trauma and fear of abandonment. This made it difficult for her to know how to express love to her children. And for every Indian who survived boarding school more determined than ever to embrace and hold onto their Indianness, there’s one who wishes to get rid of their cultural identity so much that they’ll do anything they can to “become white.”

I’ll say one final horrifying thing I learned about Indian boarding schools, and then I’ll move on. Many boarding schools were religiously affiliated, and those affiliated with the Catholic Church often became a “hiding place” for the Church to place priests and nuns accused of se*ually ab*sing children. So… yeah. I’m sure you can guess what then happened in the boarding schools.

I suppose the reason I’m not giving a higher rating for MEDICINE RIVER is because I don’t think Pember was successful at melding two ultimately very different lines of writing here. I went in hoping for a more sweeping look at the history of Indian boarding schools, so I was thrown off when the story of Pember’s mother was given more on-page time than anything else. By the time I realized I had to adjust my expectations and consider this more of a family history than anything else, it was too late, and I was not invested.

MEDICINE RIVER will appeal to those who appreciate highly personalized accounts of eras of historical significance, such as Sara Kehaulani Goo’s Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i. Personally, I prefer Eve Ewing’s Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism a bit more in terms of how it frames Indian boarding schools within the broader context of racist US imperial ideologies and policies.

[amanda luke ✡︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t think many Americans (especially white Americans) know about our country’s history of residential/boarding schools, so this is a very important read. Medicine River is part history, part memoir, with the latter really kicking in halfway through the book. At first, I really wanted more of the historical aspect, but Pember did such a great job weaving overall history with her personal history that the book wouldn’t be as good without it. Also, “legacy” is right there in the title and she IS the legacy of the boarding schools.

[Farrah · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. I was very interested in this topic but ultimately finished the book feeling very underwhelmed. The first 1/4 or so was very dry and data driven covering like 100 years of Indian policy. We didn’t actually hear very much about her mother’s experience or others experiences in Indian boarding schools because she didn’t seem to have very robust firsthand accounts. Overall, it felt a little scattered and disorganized, and I was often bored.

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author of this book recounts her personal experience living with a parent who attended residential school. Her mother was a child of a residential school, where she endured considerably violence and abuse. Children enrolled in residential schools had their familial ties disrupted. They were unable, in most cases, to form strong bonds with their parents and other family members, especially if those family members also had attended residential schools. The Indigenous customs and histories were lost or not passed on in ways they normally would have been. Tribal support was not there in ways that would have been had Indigenous populations been left undisturbed. The author discusses her difficult relationship with her mother, and the consequences of enrollment in residential schools.

I found this book to be emotional and tragic. It is especially tragic to think about the hundreds of thousands of children who endured this situation. There were residential schools in operation for far longer than many people think. The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996. The last residential school in the United States closed in 1978. So many generations of Indigenous people were traumatized in heinous ways in these places, and the systematic cultural genocide can never be repaired.

[Chapters_with_VDKeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one got under my skin—in the best kind of way. Medicine River isn’t a novel, but it reads like the most intimate kind of story: personal, powerful, and impossible to forget. Mary Annette Pember uses her mother’s experience in a Native American boarding school as the emotional anchor, then pulls back to reveal a much larger and heartbreaking reality that affected thousands of Indigenous families.

The character development is stunning—not just with her mother, but with Mary herself. You see her evolve as a daughter, a journalist, and a woman reckoning with inherited trauma. The people she interviews don’t feel like background voices—they feel like full, lived-in souls. Some stories are tender, others gut-wrenching, but all are deeply human.

And the world-building? It’s not fantasy, but it builds a world you need to understand: the cold, institutional cruelty of the boarding schools, the resilience of Native families, and the quiet strength it takes to hold onto culture after generations of erasure.

This book is emotional, eye-opening, and beautifully written. It’s history wrapped in heartache, told with grace and grit. A tough read, but a necessary one.

Thanks to Pantheon for this copy via NetGalley for providing this copy for my honest, voluntary review.
#NetGalley #Medicine

[Caitie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling Indian families to send their children to boarding schools has long been part of the federal government’s systematic assimilation and civilization policies intended to dispossess Indigenous peoples of the lands and resources so white can settle and acquire our lands.

5/5 stars.

This is part memoir and part history of the Native American boarding school system in the United States (and some mentions of Canada). The author’s own mother was a “student,” at one of these schools—which mostly taught pupils manual labor….and usually only a half day of usual school instruction.

The purpose of these schools was to essentially “kill the Indian, save the man,” and to take over land that white people thought was better. However, these schools were filled with abuse (physical, emotional and sometimes sexual) starvation and sometimes death.

This book is a vital read that everyone should read!

[Tiff Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book broke my heart over and over. I took a Native American culture class in college and THOUGHT I had a basic understanding of Indian boarding schools. The way the author tells her family’s personal experience, while also providing facts in a professional tone is incredible. I felt rage, sadness, laughed, and cried.. a lot. I will recommend this book to anyone willing to take the time to learn. It was a heartbreaking wake up to our government systems, and I am sure I will reflecting on some of my previous held views for the foreseeable future.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARC and ALC gifted by the publisher

I loved that this book incorporates larger historical and political contexts into the author’s family story seamlessly. So while Pember doesn’t shy away from analyzing her difficult relationship with her mom, and her mom with grandma, she also provides background of how boarding schools, land dispossessions, generational trauma, poverty, etc. contributes to fraught familial relationships.

[Nirupa Mathew · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Christian and an advocate for education, this book left me heartbroken. Medicine River confronts the devastating long lasting harm caused by Christian missionaries who, in the name of faith, inflicted trauma on Native communities. Equally painful are the schools that forced assimilation in brutal ways.

It is easy to believe that this inhumane brutality belongs in our nation’s past. Yet the book serves as a reminder that these patterns resurface when we fail to educate ourselves and confront our history and current leadership decisions honestly. Under the current administration, we have seen these same impulses for control, cultural and historical erasure, and forced conformity. This is precisely why knowing the truth of our country’s history is essential. Highly recommend!

[Maggie Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indian Boarding Schools is a part of American/Canadian history I didn't learn about until I was an adult. The content in this book wasn't new to be but still just as heartbreaking as the first time I became aware. The author's own mother experienced a childhood nobody should and it impacted her for a lifetime and set off ripple affects within her relationships with family and friends. Told through stories and collected, well researched, data Medicine River is a journey towards finding answers, seeking redemption for those unable to fight for justice, and grasping for healing all at the same time.

[Lynn Gambardella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and sad. I had no idea about the boarding schools young Indian children were sent to. Their traditional names were changed and hair cut! Inadequate food, draconian and unforgiving rules.

So many survivors of these schools - including the author’s mom—- have feelings of oppression and how it shames into believing that they are fundamentally unfit..even deserving of poverty.

Had no idea how unfairly these children and families were treated.
I admire the author for all the research she did which was at times not easy to uncover the information she did.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

An effective combination of the history of Indian Boarding Schools, family memoir--Pember's mother was a survivor--, and insights into Ojibwe culture, culminating in a clear statement on the need for, as she phrases it, "accountability before reconciliation." It's a story of "survivance," the resilience of Native people and communities in the face of deep and until very recently even partially recognized trauma.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

{4} Heavy. Informative. Resilient.

[Jess Fiore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great blend of history and memoir. I feel like the Indian Boarding Schools in Canada are more widely discussed and this book really painted a picture of the reality in the US

[Kayla is trying to finish her backlog of books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an eARC copy of Medicine River by Mary Annette Pember.

Medicine River is a poignant exploration of the painful legacy of Native American boarding schools, illuminating the profound impact these institutions have had on families and communities. Drawing from her own heritage as an Ojibwe journalist, Pember delves deep into her mother's experiences at a seminary in Wisconsin, weaving together personal narrative and historical context to craft a compelling account of resilience amid trauma.

Pember provides a stark portrayal of the boarding school system, which operated under the guise of assimilation and opportunity. The detailed accounts (which will break your heart) reveal the brutal realities faced by Native children - physical punishment for speaking their languages, forced labor, and emotional neglect. The violence of the institution disrupted individual lives and also sought to sever the ties that bind communities together.

The most important aspect of the novel is the intimate interviews and meticulous research which captures the echoes of these experiences across generations. Her mother's struggles resonate throughout the narrative, highlighting how the scars of the past have shaped both her life and the lives of subsequent generations. Her exploration of the relationship between herself and her mother is particularly moving, as it underscores the complex dynamics of love and loss within families affected by trauma. The importance is also Pember's unwavering commitment to authenticity. She doesn't shy away from uncomfortable truths of history, but also illuminates the ways which Native cultures are reclaiming their narratives and traditions. Medicine River isn't just a book about suffering; it is also a testament to resilience, strength, and the ongoing fight for cultural survival.

Medicine River is an important read for anyone seeking to understand the enduring impact of colonial policies on Native American communities.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is crucial that the stories of the Indian Boarding school survivors and victims be told. Unfortunately, this book tried to tackle too many stories. The author's mother was a boarding school survivor and the impacts stayed with her forever. This impacted the author as her mother was struggling emotionally. The book became a story of how trauma spreads across generations, with the author discussing research in which trauma becomes coded in our genes. Important and interesting topics, but the presentation was a bit scattered.

[Jen Capelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

It wasn't quite what I expected. I went into this book hoping for a deeper dive into the author's mother's experiences at the school. While the writing was engaging and the story had emotional depth, I found myself wanting more detail and context about her mother's time there. That part of the narrative felt somewhat underdeveloped, leaving me with unanswered questions. Overall, it was a decent read, but it didn’t fully deliver on what I was hoping to learn.

[amycw · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very important topic, but the narrative about the author's mother's experience in an Indian boarding school was bogged down by an overwhelming amount of history that read like a college textbook (treaties, government programs, names, dates, etc.). I found it impossible to stay focused with the excessive amount of minutiae. While it does provide contextualization for the story, the information could have been relayed better.

[Chad Trim · Rating 4 out of 5]

US Indian Boarding School history is a subject I've only been very vaguely aware of prior to the last few months. The Texas Public School system can be blamed for that one. But after viewing the fantastic Oscar-nominated Sugarcane, a documentary about the Canadian Indian residential school system and hearing more about National Day for Truth and Reconciliation from my Canadian colleagues, I wanted to learn more. I was excited to see Mary Annette Pember's book would do that and more to great success.

The narrative non-fiction book has a unique (in a good way) quality to it. It's equal parts history of the boarding schools in the United States and memoir of Pember's relationship to her mother who was a survivor of a boarding school in northern Wisconsin. Pember's mom's experience affected her and her kids deeply throughout both her and their lives, and Medicine River serves as almost a reconciliation process of Pember's own making. It's incredibly informative, but also unbelievably raw and personal.

It really worked for me and I learned a ton.

Thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, and Vintage for the advanced copy!

[Kendra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is going to be one of those non-fic reads that stays with me for awhile. There’s something about a journalist writing versus a more scholarly that I just vibe with so well (looking at Hayley Campbell too). That ability to fuse data with human interest and storytelling is magic. And an Indigenous woman does it even better, of course.

The amount of knowledge both macro and micro packed into this tome is incredible. I learned not only about the atrocious Indian boarding schools but also about so many policies, procedures, and practices the US government enacted against the Indigenous population since the first colonists’ feet touched Turtle Island. The lack of accountability on both the government and especially the Catholic Church’s behalf despite the light being shone on these actions both in the U.S. and Canada is despicable.

The last couple chapters of Pember sharing her own experiences and struggles to reach healing were especially compelling.