By the Fire We Carry — Rebecca Nagle

“No part of the judiciary exposes the chasm between American ideals and institutional practice like federal Indian law. In By the Fire We Carry, Nagle, a Cherokee journalist, turns a case most Americans haven’t heard of into a legal thriller.” —New York Times Book Review

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The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2024 • Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year • NPR 2024 “Books We Loved” Pick • Esquire Best Book of the Year • Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2024 • Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard First Book Prize

An impeccably researched work of reportage and American history, By the Fire We Carry intertwines the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s early years with a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights more than a century later.

Before 2020, American Indian reservations comprised roughly 55 million acres, while nearly 200 million acres were reserved for National Forests. In the 1830s, the Muscogee people were forcibly removed by the U.S. military, promised land “as long as the grass grew and the waters ran.” That promise was broken when Oklahoma was established atop Muscogee territory, with the state claiming the 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 argued the crime occurred on the reservation, limiting Oklahoma’s jurisdiction. The Supreme Court settled the dispute in 2020, reaffirming the existence of multiple reservations covering almost half of Oklahoma, including the Cherokee Nation.

Rebecca Nagle chronicles the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By the Fire We Carry exposes the historic and ongoing injustices against Native peoples while celebrating Indigenous-led resistance and the enduring struggle for justice in America.

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