[Place of publication not identified] : William Collins, 2024

1 online resource (1 audio file)

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA New Yorker Best Book of 2024 • An Esquire Best Book of Fall 2024 • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard First Book PrizeA powerful work of reportage and American history that braids together the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation's earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later.Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. By contrast, nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests - in the emergence of the United States as a nation, the government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples.In the 1830s, Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued that the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn't have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including the author's own Cherokee Nation.Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American historyThis non-fiction biography is a profound exploration of the political, social, and cultural dynamics that have shaped the Americas. Nagle's narrative is a true account of the struggle for Indigenous rights, weaving together elements of crime and regional studies to create a compelling tapestry of civil and ethnic resistance.

9780008725037

English

No reviews available as yet
Add your review

4030975