Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools
By Mary Annette Pember
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
7:00 – 8:30 PM
Lutheran Church of the Resurrection
1950 Nagel Rd., Cincinnati, OH 45255
The HUUC Indigenous Issues Group will join with ACRU (Anderson Churches for Racial Unity) and GAPP (Greater Anderson Promotes Peace) for a discussion of a new book by Cincinnati journalist and author Mary Annette Pember about the effects of Native American boarding schools. Mary “is perfectly positioned to write this book,” according to the New York Times Book Review. “She’s an enrolled citizen of the Red Cliff Band of the Wisconsin Ojibwe, a journalist who has reported on Native issues for more than two decades and the granddaughter and daughter of boarding school survivors.”
This is a hybrid event. Registration is requested for in-person, but required to receive the Zoom link. Register at: https://gappacrubook2025.eventbrite.com
More information is available at www.gappeace.org or email questions to
Additional details about the book from Penguin Random House:
Medicine River is “A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools is a sweeping and deeply personal account of Native American boarding schools in the United States, and the legacy of abuse wrought by them in an attempt to destroy Native culture and life.
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 to no 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 utterly deprived of love and affection.
Amongst those thousands of children was Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember’s mother, who was sent to a boarding school in northern Wisconsin at age five. The trauma of her experience cast a pall over Pember’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 but hopeful portrait of communities still reckoning with the trauma of acculturation, religion, and abuse caused by the state. Through searing interviews and careful reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of Native cultures and nations in relation to the country that has been intent on eradicating them.”
Image source: HUUC.net media library