Today, my guest offers an account of Native boarding schools and justice long overdue.
In Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools, Mary Annette Pember shares her mother’s experience at a Catholic boarding school in northern Wisconsin. The story offers a glimpse into what those schools were like and how their legacy continues to shape Native life today. As Mary told me, both the government and the Church “need to be called out” as the U.S. finally begins to reckon with this chapter of its history.
Mary is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of the Wisconsin Ojibwe and national correspondent for ICT News (formerly Indian Country Today). Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and many other outlets. She’s also a past president of the Native American Journalists’ Association.
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