As a child, Mary Annette Pember often found herself alone at night, witnessing visions she describes as "strings of lights, resembling glowing serpents," that danced across her bedroom ceiling.
When she inquired about these mysterious lights, her mother, an Ojibwe woman from northern Wisconsin, reassured her they were guardians meant to protect her, cautioning her to keep the experience private.
Mary Annette’s mother had endured profound hardship and survival, often needing to confront darkness with unwavering awareness. This spirit is captured in Pember’s compelling new book, "Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools."
The book offers an unfiltered account of the widespread abuse Native American children faced in federally run boarding schools, while also serving as an intimate family memoir focused on Bernice Rabideaux, a deeply scarred Ojibwe child who grew into a resilient yet wounded woman.
From the 1860s through much of the twentieth century, thousands of Native children were forcibly placed in boarding schools operated largely by the Catholic Church, intended to erase Indigenous identities through assimilation. Within these institutions, many endured humiliation, violence, deprivation, and sometimes death, with devastating effects on their lives and communities.
Bernice Rabideaux was among those children, attending St. Mary’s Catholic Indian Mission School, known locally as the “Sister School,” from the age of five through her teenage years on the Bad River reservation in Odanah, Wisconsin. Her experiences there created a lasting tension between the values imposed by white Christian settlers and her Ojibwe heritage centered on community and environmental respect. Bernice passed away in 2011 at 86 years old.
