MOTHER'S DAY SPECIALS! SHOW ME MORE

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

By the Fire We Carry

The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

Rebecca Nagle

$35.99

Paperback

In stock
Ready to ship

QTY:

English
HARPER360
30 October 2024
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NONFICTION

A 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 Prize

'Reads like a legal thriller' ESQUIRE

'As propulsive and affecting as it is infuriating' VANITY FAIR

A 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 history.
By:  
Imprint:   HARPER360
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 153mm,  Spine: 27mm
Weight:   380g
ISBN:   9780008725013
ISBN 10:   0008725012
Pages:   352
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Rebecca Nagle is an award-winning reporter, writer, and citizen of Cherokee Nation. She is the creator and host of Crooked Media's chart-topping podcast This Land. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Guardian, USA Today, Teen Vogue, the Huffington Post, among other outlets. Nagle lives in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Reviews for By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

'A fascinating book and an important one… She compellingly describes not only the historical wrongs committed against Indigenous peoples, but also how we can’t excuse those wrongs by assuming that they were acceptable to their contemporaries because of some kind of lesser moral standard' Washington Post 'A narrative as propulsive and affecting as it is infuriating' Vanity Fair 'Nagle's gripping historical and legal chronicle sheds light on a centuries-long struggle for Indigenous sovereignty and tribal land in Oklahoma' New York Times Book Review 'Breathtaking: essential reading for anyone yet to understand who US law exists to serve, and who it exists to exploit. Nagle’s book achieves impeccable balance; it’s a call for hope which still never loses sight of the labour and blood underpinning every victory in this rigged system. A triumph' NOREEN MASUD, author of A Flat Place 'Compellingly told and deeply researched, Nagle's timely work brilliantly reveals the sweeping and yet profoundly personal consequences of ongoing Indigenous struggles for sovereignty' CAROLINE DODDS PENNOCK, author of On Savage Shores ‘Rebecca Nagle lays bare centuries of injustice in Oklahoma and the southeastern lands from which the American government exiled her ancestors and thousands of other Indigenous peoples. By the Fire We Carry is a clear and courageous call for justice’ TIYA MILES, author of All That She Carried ‘This is great storytelling, dogged reporting, and a compelling personal tale all wrapped in a book that should live for years to come’ TIMOTHY EGAN, author of A Fever in the Heartland ‘Nagle brings us face-to-face with personal and collective histories and their consequences in a multigenerational story of corruption, betrayal, and the enduring strength of Native resistance. This book is enlightening, enraging, inspiring, and impossible to put down’ IJEOMA OLUO, author of So You Want to Talk About Race


See Also