Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools
by Mary Annette Pember
Medicine River book cover
Author Mary Annette Pember
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.
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