
Medicine River
A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools
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Narrated by:
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Erin Tripp
About this listen
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 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.
©2025 Mary Annette Pember (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
One of The New York Times' Nonfiction Books to Read This Spring
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Ms. Magazine, The Orange County Register, Electric Literature
“Powerful. . . . An important work in the growing literature about the trauma those boarding schools inflicted on generations of Native peoples. . . . Pember’s journalism and advocacy [make] clear the scope and impact of one major pillar of this epochal injustice. . . . . It’s essential that stories like Pember’s stories are amplified and the momentum toward justice is sustained until such a time as it can be delivered.”—Los Angeles Times
“[Pember’s] expertise is on full display here. There’s no one more equipped to cover the tragedy of boarding schools, their lasting legacy and the survivance of those forced to attend.”—Ms. Magazine
“A searing account of Indian boarding schools and the impact they continue to have on families, communities and cultures. . . . Medicine River is [Pember’s] magnum opus, a must-read for all people who long to see justice flow. . . . An unforgettable read.”—BookPage (starred review)
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One of 6 million stories that needed to be told.
- By Nancy on 05-03-25
By: Joe Dunthorne
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Lower than the Angels
- A History of Sex and Christianity
- By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Narrated by: Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Length: 25 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Few matters produce more public interest and public anxiety than sex and religion. Much of the political contention and division in societies across the world centres on sexual topics, and one-third of the global population is Christian in background or outlook. The issue goes to the heart of present-day religion.
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God's Battalions
- The Case for the Crusades
- By: Rodney Stark
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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A respected and controversial scholar argues that the Crusades were a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression. This book takes on the current vogue in liberal thinking to argue that, in fact, the Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts. The Crusaders were not barbarians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. They sincerely believed that they served in God’s Battalions.
By: Rodney Stark
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America, América
- A New History of the New World
- By: Greg Grandin
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 25 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both.
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Most important history book of 2025
- By Emily B Wachsmann on 05-19-25
By: Greg Grandin
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The Acid Queen
- The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary
- By: Susannah Cahalan
- Narrated by: Susannah Cahalan
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosemary Woodruff Leary has been known only as the wife of Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor-turned-psychedelic high priest, whose jailbreak captivated the counterculture and whose life on the run with Rosemary inflamed the government. But Rosemary was more than a mere accessory. She was a beatnik, a psychonaut, and a true believer who tested the limits of her mind and the expectations for women of her time.
By: Susannah Cahalan
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The Fate of the Generals
- MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines
- By: Jonathan Horn
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received their country’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic and controversial Douglas MacArthur, whose orders forced him to leave his soldiers on the islands to starvation and surrender but whose vow to return echoed around the globe. The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became a hero to the troops whose fate he insisted on sharing even when it meant becoming the highest-ranking American prisoner of the Japanese.
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Excellent and well done
- By Jason on 05-20-25
By: Jonathan Horn
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Medicine River
- By: Thomas King
- Narrated by: Wesley French
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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When Will returns to Medicine River, he thinks he is simply attending his mother’s funeral. He doesn’t count on Harlen Bigbear and his unique brand of community planning. Harlen tries to sell Will on the idea of returning to Medicine River to open shop as the town’s only Native photographer. Somehow, that’s exactly what happens. Through Will’s gentle and humorous narrative, we come to know Medicine River, a small Albertan town bordering a Blackfoot reserve. And we meet its people: the basketball team; Louise Heavyman and her daughter, South Wing, and many more.
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Worth avoiding
- By Graham Findlay on 12-02-21
By: Thomas King
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The Determined Spy
- The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner
- By: Douglas Waller
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy—and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions—resonates with the international crises we see today.
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Essential For Understanding The Cold War
- By Demetrius Walker on 05-13-25
By: Douglas Waller
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The Fairbanks Four
- Murder, Injustice, and the Birth of a Movement
- By: Brian Patrick O’Donoghue
- Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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October, 1997. Late one night in Fairbanks, Alaska, a passerby finds a teenager unconscious, collapsed on the edge of the road, beaten nearly beyond recognition. Two days later, he dies in the hospital. His name is John Gilbert Hartman and he's just turned 15 years old. The police quickly arrest four suspects, all under the age of 21 and of Alaska Native and American Indian descent. Police lineup witnesses, trials follow, and all four men receive lengthy prison terms. Case closed. But journalist Brian Patrick O'Donoghue can't put the story out of his mind.
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This Is Your Mother
- A Memoir
- By: Erika J. Simpson
- Narrated by: Ericka J. Simpson
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When Erika Simpson was growing up, her mother loomed large, almost biblical in her life. A daughter of sharecroppers, middle child of ten, her origin story served as a Genesis. Her departure from home and a cheating husband, pursuing higher education along the way a kind of Exodus. Her rules for survival, often repeated like the Ten Commandments, guided Erika’s own journey into adulthood. And the most important rule? Throughout her life, Sallie Carol preached the power of a testimony—which often proved useful in talking her way out of a bind with bill collectors.
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Wow!
- By Anna Hargrave on 05-15-25
By: Erika J. Simpson
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When It All Burns
- Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
- By: Jordan Thomas
- Narrated by: Jordan Thomas
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In When It All Burns, wildland firefighter and anthropologist Jordan Thomas recounts a single, brutal six-month fire season with the Los Padres Hotshots—the special forces of America’s firefighters. Being a hotshot is among the most difficult jobs on earth. Thomas viscerally renders his crew’s attempts to battle flames that are often too destructive to contain. He uncovers the hidden cultural history of megafires, revealing how humanity’s symbiotic relationship with wildfire became a war—and what can be done to change it back.
By: Jordan Thomas
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Midnight on the Potomac
- The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America
- By: Scott Ellsworth
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Told with a thrilling pace, New York Times bestselling author and historian Scott Ellsworth has written the most compelling new book about the Civil War in years. Focusing on the last, desperate months of the war, when the outcome was far from certain, Midnight on the Potomac is a story of titanic battles, political upheaval, and the long-forgotten Confederate terror war against the loyal citizens of the North.
By: Scott Ellsworth
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Story of a Murder
- The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen
- By: Hallie Rubenhold
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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On February 1, 1910, the vivacious, diamond-adorned music hall performer Belle Elmore suddenly vanished from her home, causing alarm among her friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. Their demands for an investigation would lead to the unearthing of a gruesome secret and trigger a fevered international manhunt for Belle’s husband, medical fraudster Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen.
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Great but none of the heart of The Five
- By S. Armor on 04-13-25
By: Hallie Rubenhold
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The Book of Form and Emptiness
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Ozeki
- Narrated by: Ruth Ozeki
- Length: 19 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.
By: Ruth Ozeki
great!
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Medicine River really brought a lot of feelings to the surface from my own experience with my family.🪶💔🥀
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