{ "item_title" : "By the Fire We Carry", "item_author" : [" Rebecca Nagle "], "item_description" : "NATIONAL BESTSELLERWinner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book PrizeThe New Yorker's Best Books of 2024 - A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year - An NPR 2024 Books We Loved Pick - An Esquire Best Book of the Year - A Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year - A Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2024Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard First Book Prize - Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize - Winner of the Oklahoma Historical Society's E. E. Dale Award - Winner of the Oklahoma Book Award for Nonfiction - Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction - Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Nonfiction - Shortlisted for MPIBA's Reading the West Award for Nonfiction - Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize - Finalist for the ABA Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts - Finalist for the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize - Runner-up for the Libby Award for Best Adult NonfictionImpeccably researched. . . . A fascinating book and an important one.--Washington PostA brilliant, kaleidoscopic debut. . . . A showstopper.--Publishers Weekly, starred reviewA powerful work of reportage and American history that braids 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. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests--in the emergence of this great nation, our 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 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 that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle'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. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country. ", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/06/311/204/0063112043_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "32.00", "online_price" : "32.00", "our_price" : "32.00", "club_price" : "32.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "32.00" } }

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In By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land, journalist Rebecca Nagle chronicles generations of land theft perpetrated by the American government against Native American nations, following Native leaders and allies who have pushed back. This vital account not only explains how the United States government and Supreme Court swindled Native Americans out of millions of acres of land designated for them in treaty allotments, but also details how the fight for Native land rights continues today, including the unfolding of a 2020 Supreme Court win upholding much of Oklahoma as tribal land. In the book, Nagle focuses on threads in two Native nations’ histories, one historical and one contemporary, to lay out the social and legal precedent for our current state of affairs. In the present, Nagle visits Muscogee Nation, where an Oklahoma public defender argues that Patrick Murphy’s 1999 murder of George Jacobs, for which he was convicted and sentenced to death, was committed on reservation land rather than in Oklahoma’s jurisdiction. Murphy’s appeal opens up a broader, fiercer debate over Native land and treaty rights, escalating to the Supreme Court. The other main thread follows Nagle’s own ancestors, 19th-century Cherokee Nation leaders John and Major Ridge, who were confronted with treaty negotiations, land politics and immense strife following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. With precision and ease, Nagle defines and contextualizes legal terms and historical figures. This sturdy scaffolding allows the reader to gain footholds for ethical exploration and discussion, as well as pass judgment on the supposed impartial nature of the American government and Supreme Court. Making cultural context and treaty details easily accessible, and using the Native legal and cultural advocates who have won back land as guideposts, Nagle clearly demonstrates centuries of precedent in which corruption of American businesses and government alike has undone the legal protections previously given to Native land and livelihood across America. “The fight over truth is so bitter because power flows from the dominant narrative—the power to shape both public sentiment and public policy,” Nagle writes. By the Fire We Carry is essential reading for considering how the country can end this cycle of irreparable damage and move toward a more just future.