The Weekly Brief

Indian Country news for Patty Loew

Person

Mary Annette Pember

ICT national correspondent, Red Cliff Ojibwe Past NAJA president.

Coverage in The Weekly Brief

Background · 2025 · poynter

Mary Annette Pember Publishes 'Medicine River' on Indian Boarding Schools

On April 22, 2025, Mary Annette Pember of Red Cliff released Medicine River with Pantheon, weaving her mother Bernice Rabideaux's experience as a five-year-old at St. Mary's Catholic Indian Boarding School in Odanah with archival research on the federal boarding school system. St. Mary's operated on the Bad River reservation from 1883 to 1969 under the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, who have since begun a Truth and Healing process that included a repatriation ceremony with the Bad River Tribe.