Longtime Native affairs journalist will join Rural Assembly Everywhere on July 23
The Rural Assembly Everywhere 2026 national broadcast will feature an interview with award-winning author and journalist Mary Annette Pember. Pember will discuss her first book, Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools (Penguin Random House, 2025), during the July 23 event.
Pember is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe. She is currently national correspondent for ICT News, formerly Indian Country Today, and has worked as an independent journalist focusing on Native American issues since 2000. Pember is the recipient of the Clarion Award, several Associated Press awards, and the Medill Milestone Achievement Award as well as Type Investigations’ Ida B. Wells Fellowship, a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism, and the USC Annenberg National Health Journalism Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Reveal News, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among other publications. She currently lives with her husband and two children in Cincinnati.
Her first book, Medicine River, explores the history of Indian boarding schools and the story of Pember’s mother, who was one of tens of thousands Native children who 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.
Pember’s mother 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.
Pember will be interviewed by Shirley Sneve. Sneve is a Senior Multimedia Producer for the ICT Newscast at IndiJ Public Media. In her role, she shapes Indigenous storytelling across digital platforms and public television—carrying forward ICT’s mission of journalism by, for, and about Native communities. A member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, Shirley brings deep experience in Indigenous media. She previously directed Vision Maker Media—the largest funder of Indigenous programming for public broadcasting—and served as executive director of the Arts Extension Service. Shirley also helped launch the Northern Plains Tribal Arts Juried Show, the Oyate Trail cultural tourism byway, and the Alliance of Tribal Tourism Advocates.
Register now to join us for this conversation and more at Rural Assembly Everywhere, the live national broadcast of the Rural Assembly.
Read more about Mary Annette Pember
Review: The Personal and National Tragedy of American Indian Boarding Schools | Daily Yonder, May 15, 2025
Q&A: Mary Annette Pember’s New Book Traces the Violent Legacy of Forced Assimilation | Daily Yonder, May 16, 2025
