By the Fire We Carry

The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

Rebecca Nagle

$52.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

William Collins
12 September 2024

History of the Americas; History: specific events & topics; Indigenous peoples; Constitutional & administrative law; Human rights & civil liberties law

‘Breathtaking… a triumph' NOREEN MASUD

'A fiery account as chilling as a legal thriller' TIYA MILES

'Compellingly told and deeply researched' CAROLINE DODDS PENNOCK

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: Rebecca Nagle
Imprint: William Collins
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 159mm, Spine: 35mm
Weight: 720g
ISBN: 9780008725006
ISBN 10: 0008725004
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 12 September 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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

‘In a fiery account as chilling as a legal thriller, 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 ‘This is brilliant journalism and exceptional history. In the best tradition of social justice writing, it challenges the head, breaks the heart, and offers hope for the future’ PHILIP J. DELORIA, Dakota descent, author of Becoming Mary Sully ‘Part legal page-turner, part her own compelling family saga, and part eloquent lament for the horrific way our nation has treated Native Americans over the centuries, Rebecca Nagle’s By the Fire We Carry has also given us something exceedingly rare—a story about Native Americans in the Supreme Court in which the good guys actually win’ ADAM COHEN, author of Supreme Inequality