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!

This book is a sobering, well-crafted exploration of a deeply painful chapter in U.S. history. Mary Annette Pember’s account not only sheds light on her own family's generational trauma, but also offers a thorough investigation into the broader systemic harm inflicted by the Native American boarding school system. With a journalist’s precision and a daughter’s heart, Pember combines personal narrative with historical context to expose the devastating consequences of forced assimilation. The stories are raw, and the emotional resonance is profound.

What sets this work apart is its commitment to honoring the strength and resilience of Native communities. Rather than portraying survivors solely as victims, Pember highlights their ingenuity, resistance, and remarkable capacity for forgiveness—even in the face of profound cruelty.

Though the book at times reads more like a textbook, I still found it deeply engaging. The harrowing scenes, though a bit long, I thought were necessary to truly grasp the scale and brutality of what Indigenous peoples endured. It becomes clear that the atrocities committed were neither isolated nor uniform—they were systemic.

If you enjoy history, this book might be for you. The details shine a light on the ongoing intergenerational impact of these schools, making this not just an informative read, but a transformative one. It’s an essential read that will stay with you for a long time.

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. These Native American boarding schools have a legacy of abuse. One of the children sent to a school was Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother, and how they have harmed not just the children who were forced to go, but the following generations. “Medicine River” was a wonderful book to read, but very emotional. Consider this as assigned reading now.

Thank you NetGalley and Pantheon! #MedicineRiver #NetGalley

A snapshot of American history that many choose not to speak of even today. With so many commissions and committees that have investigated and issued condemning reports, it would seem impossible for so many people not to have condemned the actions and consequences of so many. From the mid 1800s to early 1900s, Native American children of all ages were removed from their homes and educated to believe that their traditional ways were wrong. As investigators dig through archives and reports, it becomes more apparent that the goal of these schools was to assimilate these children into a way of life approved by the teachers.
In MEDICINE RIVER, Mary Annette Pember gives us a personal, up close picture of this abuse. Her mother was removed to a seminary school in Wisconsin where the student abuse is well documented. The scars, emotional and physical, have impacted the lives of her family in so many ways. Not only did she lose her family's history, she was unable to care for her children. Pember mixes her family's personal challenges with the documented history of the school giving readers a mixed bag of emotional stories. While the book is well worth reading, it's closer to the memoir genre than historical nonfiction. If you're interested in learning about the "schools", this should be one of many stories you read.

What a heartbreaking and important piece of history. Pember's book about the horrific, abusive Native American boarding schools needs to be required reading. I had done independent research on this topic but never anything as in depth as this book. From the personal aspect of the author's own life to the history of the boarding schools as a whole, Medicine River is a difficult yet worthy read.

In this nonfiction account of the mental, emotional, and generational impact of the Indian Boarding Schools in the mid 17th century until the early 20th century. The schools were started as a way to "civilize" or "assimilate" Native American children and youth to Anglo American lives. The author discusses family memeber's experiences as well as interviews of non relatives about their encounters with the schools. Throughout the subject material she also interweaves her family story. The author tells of a heartbreaking story of survival, and family dynamics.

This is an important story that needed to be told and a topic that needs more answers/reparations from those that did the oppressing.




Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for an eARC in return for an honest review!

Thank you, NetGalley and Pantheon Books, for approving me to read this book and share my thoughts!
This was a heartbreaking read. I will never understand how people could take children, as young as 3 years old, away from their mothers & fathers. The boarding schools were often sponsored by the US government and run by religious POS with no regulations. The fact that thousands of children died there is horrific/evil.
One example: Tuberculosis, diphtheria, and measles often ran rampant through these schools. I read that children who were close to dying from these were sent back to their homes in order to spread the sickness to their families.

Through the factual information, the author was able to give firsthand accounts of people who lived through this time. I saw the compassion she had for her mother to look into her past & try to understand her. Also, how she spread a message of resiliency and strength in their community to not only revive their culture/heritage but to assist those dealing with the aftermath.

I was curious and googled boarding schools around CO. I found one that used to be in Denver called Good Shepherd Industrial School or E.M. Byers Home for Boys. It was a reformatory but has been converted to a regular Catholic school. There are literally hundreds in the USA.
Overall, this book was informative & intimate. One that I will not forget because of how relevant it is today, sadly.

A must read! A look into the Native American boarding schools in America that very vividly and hauntingly describes the horrible abuses that occurred there. I learned so much. A must read.

Recently, I have immersed myself in the history of Indian boarding schools fictionally, historically, and physically. I often pass the site of the Phoenix Indian School, and my visit to the internationally acclaimed Heard Museum included much time spent in the excellent (and sobering) exhibit Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories. That time brought to life many things I've read, including Mary Annette Pember's Medicine River.

Pember's exhaustive research began as a way to understand her mother's behavior as well as her grandmother's. Both women were sent to Indian boarding schools, and Mary's mother in particular was indelibly scarred from her experience.

Indian boarding schools were the U.S. government's attempt to assimilate all Native Americans-- to make them think and behave like whites. The boarding schools were rife with disease, and those in charge sent sick children back to the reservation to infect and kill many others. To add insult to injury, these children were forced into schools that Native Americans were forced to pay for. They literally funded their own abuse.

Pember shines light on so many topics. Legislation affecting Native Americans over the years. Famous Native Americans who were products of those boarding schools. Insights into her own Ojibwe culture. The homegrown historians (mostly women, both Indian and white) who are documenting and preserving America's Indian boarding school history. This book is a gold mine of illuminating facts that also helped the author shed light on her personal history.

One of the things I found most interesting was the study of epigenetics-- that humans can pass along more than DNA in our genes, that genes can also carry memories of trauma experienced by our ancestors. It's an interesting avenue of thought.

Medicine River is an important addition to Native American history. It is a history that we should all know more about.

Medicine River is an excellent blend of non-fiction and memoir. I loved the author's including her own mother's time in residential boarding schools. There is a ton of well-researched info in here too.

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

Mary Annette Pember wanted to understand her mother’s life, hoping it would shed light on her failures as a mother. She knew her mother had endured and seen abuse at residential school, and researched records to learn more.

To understand her family story in context, Pember shares a complete history of the United States government’s policies toward Native Americans, including the mandatory residential schools whose goal of ‘civilizing’ was seen as a humane alternative to extermination.

It is depressing and disturbing to read.

Well into the book, the author shares her own story, including running away, living on the streets, and addiction. The rising civil rights movement inspired the American Indian Movement, and along the women’s movement, she was empowered. She enrolled in university and found her voice as a journalist.

More than a memoir due to the vast amount of history shared, it would be an excellent book for readers who seek a broad knowledge of Native American history and an understanding of intergenerational trauma.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley

Medicine River by Mary Annette Pember is a haunting, deeply personal look at the legacy of Native American boarding schools and the generations shaped by them. Through her mother’s story and voices of other survivors, Ojibwe journalist Mary Annette Pember sheds light on the trauma of forced assimilation and the resilience of Native communities reclaiming what was nearly lost.

Many thanks to Pantheon Books and NetGalley for allowing me to review an advanced copy of Mary Annette Pember’s powerful book Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools. I am glad that more researchers, historians and journalists like Pember have started to excavate the hidden history of abuses and coercion that have occurred at Indian Boarding Schools during the 19th and 20th centuries. A few months ago, I read Eve Ewing’s incredible book Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of Americanism which challenges the notion of education as a means to social and economic mobility, and rather than viewing education as an equalizing force in society, Ewing recasts the ways that education was used to control and eradicate culture, operating under the assumptions of a cultural superiority that is still persistent today. It’s a powerful lesson and book that challenged my own ideas and hopes about education, yet also presented some ways that education can continue to grow and adapt to better teach Black and Native students. Medicine River focuses more specifically on Indian boarding schools, which were prominent throughout the 19th and even the 20th century, and explores their economic, social, and psychological legacy and the generations trauma that continues to haunt many Native families long after their ancestors attended these schools. Using her own mother’s experience in the Sister School in Wisconsin. Recalling discussions and stories from her Mother, Bernice, Pember begins to weave the story of these boarding schools with history, policy, and the tragedies that often were a continued part of these schools. While I initially thought this book would be mostly a focus on the history and legacies of the schools, Pember uses her mother’s experience, along with other subjects in the book, to examine the generational pain and emotional destruction that these schools have wrought on Native communities across the United States and Canada. She not only explores her mother’s story, but also interweaves her own experiences with school, exploring how her mother’s pain and abuse connected to Pember’s own eventual disconnection with school and her decision to run away from home in the 1970s. Pember’s story is one of redemption, and explores how she overcame these initial challenges to earn a college degree and a successful career in journalism, while also eventually becoming sober. The latter third of the book delves more into how traditional therapies and recovery efforts may not necessarily be culturally relevant to Native groups, who experience some of the highest rates of poverty and addiction in America. She presents the story of a Yup’ik community in Alaska that uses more traditional methods and encourages a sustenance lifestyle that their ancestors practiced to help members overcome addition and challenging mental health problems. Pember also revisits the painful last years of her mother’s life, while also continuing to weave together new revelations from her grandparents’ lives that she never realized due to her mother’s trauma. Medicine River is almost like 3 books in one—sharing some of the best qualities of memoir, historical analysis, and culturally relevant mental health practices. Although the book is challenging and features instances of violence, abuse, and the deaths of Native children, it’s an important reminder to recognize the kind of settler mentality and cultural supremacy that devised these schools and recognized them as a powerful state tool to not only eradicate Indigenous cultures across North America, but also as a means to weaken familial ties and gain land and access to minerals and resources like timber.
While I enjoyed the entirety of this book, I felt like Pember’s strongest points were when she was writing about the boarding schools and the history and policies that eventually brought them about. Like Ewing’s book, Pember delves into the policies that brought about these schools, and how politicians used them as a means of control and coercion, and to avoid the physical genocide by bringing about a cultural genocide, often repeating the phrase on which these schools operated “Kill the Indian, save the man.” Pember begins by researching the archives for these schools which are held at Marquette University. She shares how there is some hesitancy to allow her full access, and her initial experience with the archives did not really provide that much illuminating evidence. However, her later research explores many of the horrors that children and their families experienced, from forcing the children into these schools with threats and legal action to the forced assimilation towards White Christianity. In what is some of the most harrowing research presented, Pember explores how illnesses which were typically deadly in the 19th and early 20th century, like measles, tuberculosis, and the flu, were often passed to Native children, who were then sent home to further spread these illnesses within their communities. Pember documents various cases of young children, infected with disease, and often returning home to die. In other cases, she explores how families were often notified after burial of their children’s passing. It’s heartbreaking and shocking to learn that while these schools were supposed to provide care and education for Native children, they were often sites of cultural and physical violence, sometimes even resulting in death. Pember, through her own family’s experiences, details the long-lasting effects of this kind of abuse and pain, and how families often pass down the emotional pain from generation to generation. I learned so much from these chapters, and Pember’s detailed research and fact-finding helped to add even more depth and significance to the research presented in Ewing’s book.
Pember then transitions into her own story, which is both fascinating and tragic, yet ultimately redemptive and hopeful. It was interesting to learn about her mother’s experiences once she left the Sisters School, but then how Pember first met her grandfather, who plays an important role in the later story, once Pember learns more about how her mother eventually ended up in the Sisters School. Pember shares her own experiences in school, and the kind of racism and discrimination she faced in schools, leading her to eventually leave and run away. This part of the book was surprising, not only for Pember’s adventures as a runaway, but also as to the candor and bravery for telling her story. I wasn’t expecting this part of the book, and it was fascinating to learn more about her background and experiences. I think this aspect of her story also shows the kind of generational trauma or how the unresolved pain and anguish can be passed along from mother to daughter. It’s an important message about acknowledging the pain and hurt once experiences to move beyond it and ensure that we don’t subject our children to the same kind of pain and hurt we experienced as children. Pember’s story is also hopeful since she explores how she eventually returned from juvenile incarceration to attend University of Wisconsin and earn a degree in journalism. Although she doesn’t get too into the details of her alcoholism, she discusses her initial career as a journalist, and how it kind of enabled her drinking further. However, in returning to the idea of generational trauma, Pember experiences waking up from a drunken night on a bathroom with her daughter staring at her. This was her moment of clarity, when she recognized that she didn’t want to inflict the same pain and hurt that she experienced on her daughter. It’s a powerful lesson to learn, and sadly one that Pember’s mother, Bernice, continued to struggle with throughout her life.
The latter part of the book deals more with overcoming this kind of trauma and the acknowledgement of the destruction and damage done by these boarding schools. The focus isn’t completely on the schools themselves, but rather many of the health and mental health challenges that Native communities face in America and Canada today. One of the most powerful sections focuses on Pember’s journey to Alaska to meet with a Yup’ik community that is burying a young man who was murdered by his niece, over an argument that no one is really sure how it began. This was also an important part of the book since Pember explains how often the traditional therapeutic practices for dealing with mental health issues aren’t always relevant and don’t always work for Indigenous peoples. I found this idea to be similar to educational researchers like Gloria Ladson Billings and Lisa Delpit who argue that in order for learning to be meaningful for groups of students, it needs to relevant and aligned with their own cultural values and experiences. Similarly, Pember’s revelation about the inefficacy of these practices also reminded me of Alisha McCullough’s book Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within, where she explores how Western and White concepts of body image and nutrition are often ineffective and sometimes unhealthy for people of color. It’s an important reminder about how the kind of ethnocentricity continues to permeate and cause problems by failing to acknowledge cultural differences and preferences. Furthermore, I think Pember’s analysis and exploration of culturally relevant practices is an important reminder of the how necessary it is to acknowledge and include diversity in our education, practices, and considerations. The continued war against diversity can have devasting and lethal consequences for those communities that continue to face challenges and hardships, while also facing a denial of their practices, values, and beliefs. Another chapter follows the revelations about the abuse and deaths in Canadian boarding schools, and how despite acknowledgement and pledges from the government, many of the First Nations People are still waiting for reparations. I also found it interesting how Canadian politicians and even the Pope acknowledged, but also hedged their responsibilities and roles in the abuse, often blaming things like the doctrine of discovery or a colonial mentality that people were following at the time. Pember presents Canada’s actions as both a kind of blueprint for what to do and what not to do. She also outlines how Deb Haaland, the former Secretary of the Interior, helped to lead an investigation into the abuses in American Indian Boarding Schools. While I’m not hopeful that much will come of these investigations now with a change in the regime that seems to care nothing about history or Indigenous peoples, it’s still important to see what kinds of action have been taking place and how this may lead to change or further investigations in the future. Furthermore, Pember’s book will also serve as an important document that explores not just the events themselves, but the continued legacy and challenges that many descendants of boarding school survivors face. The last chapter also details Bernice’s later years and death, and how Pember was able to eventually learn more about her mother’s life and how she ended up at the Sister’s school. It was different from her mother’s memory, and this chapter served as an interesting way to recognize how the pain and trauma can often cloud our perception of the past, causing us to re-evaluate who was at fault and who we may look to for protection. Although the book was filled with pain and tragedy, Pember does end on a hopeful note, acknowledging her own experience as one of hope and resilience, but also acknowledging that there is still more work and healing to be done. I loved how she used her experience of the jingle dress, a traditional Ojibwe practice for healing, to emphasize the importance of culture to healing and moving on. This is a great book with a powerful message and exploration of both personal experience and its connection to larger events in American history.

"Medicine River" by Mary Annette Pember is a historically significant subject matter with intense material. This is an important part of history that has been intentionally forgotten or swept under the rug. I enjoyed the facts about this book. It was a bit difficult to read at times due to the very factual writing style.

The content of what this book covers warrants a high-star rating as it fits within the pantheon of history that we were not taught in our US public schools. It’s also a very personal story of the author’s family history and trauma- passed on inter-generationally.
However I found it difficult to read stylistically. There were parts written in a narrative non-fiction style that were engaging and engrossing. But much is written more like an academic research paper with facts, figures, resources written into the storyline…these aspects bogged the book down.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

Wow. This is a really important book. I appreciated the author's personal ties and passion for the subject at hand. I was informed and saddened at the same time. It really is astonishing sometimes about things that occur that if it doesn't closely involve us, we don't have any idea about. This is something to be outraged about! Thank you for opening my eyes to this atrocity and how people were treated.

This is a book that people everywhere should pick up and read. It is an intensely personal work for the author, and the care she takes in weaving family history together with documented facts and first hand accounts is astounding. There were, however, times when I wished more information would have been used from other boarding schools to support and expand on the information given. That being said, this is focused on the Bad River school. Mary Annette Pember's family history, in the case of Indian boarding schools in the US and Canada, is not as unique as we would hope for it to be. It is a huge part of thousands of families that continues to echo through our communities today.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This was a well done book, but over a very difficult topic. I can't say that I enjoyed reading this, but I think it was important to do so. At times, the chapters felt very dense, which made the pace feel so slow. With all of that information, sometimes I got confused with the timeline, and I am unsure if that's a reader issue or an issue with the structure of the chapters. Regardless, this was overall done well.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for a copy of this ARC.

(I received a copy of Medicine River through NetGalley and Pantheon in exchange for an honest review.)

The story Mary Annette Pember has to tell isn't an easy one to read. It can't have been easy for her to write. As much as it is a story that she needed to write, it is a story that needs to be read, told, and understood so that, to paraphase the cliche in the study of history, what happened does not happen again.

Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools is the memoir of the author, the biography of her mother, the history of her family, and the story of the wider community of Native Americans who endured the boarding schools that the US government and the (mainly Catholic) churches demanded of them. And the balance between all of those parts is just right.

Having read various articles and seen reports on the boarding schools and their dark legacy, I didn't come to this story without some background knowledge. In fact, I thought I knew things. Whether Medicine River corrected things or simply challenged me to understand them on a deeper level, it changed how I see it all.

I'd heard of the 'smallpox blankets' that were possibly used intentionally to attempt to wipe out tribes in the Midwest. I hadn't known that the US government and the Catholic Church more or less arranged for tuberculosis to ravage the tribes - by sending sick children home to die so their deaths wouldn't be on school records and be allowing nuns to teach while sick, and blaming the sickness in the tribes on their 'dirty, unChristian lives.'

It wasn't really surprising that starvation and physical abuse were used as punishments and teaching moments. I wish it were surprising that the abuse was often doled out for things like children speaking their native languages or calling each other by their tribal names.

The underlying lesson taught by the schools seemed to be that the only correct answer was to be white and to be Christian.

And since that was impossible, the students paid the price in ways that still reverberate through their communities to this day.

When the author laid out what Pope Francis said in his apology for the Catholic schools in Canada, what Canada is doing to acknowledge it's own dark history with their residential schools, and what Deb Haaland (Secretary of the Interior under President Biden) spearheaded in America... it all should be more, mostly because it should never have happened, but at least it's something.

We can only hope that the current American administration and future administrations carry on what Secretary Haaland started.

It should be obvious that I haven't mentioned the memoir/family history aspect of this book - and I don't feel comfortable doing that. As a white woman, born in a different era than the author, I will simply say that it is a story that needs to be heard and the best person to tell it is Mary Annette Pember.