First America

BY THE FIRE WE CARRY, the new book by Rebecca Nagle, is a 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. 

Learn more: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/by-the-fire-we-carry-rebecca-nagle

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Episode 1: The Police Officer and the Priest: One night back in the late 1970s, an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pulled over a suspected drunk driver. When he walked up to the vehicle, he came face-to-face with a ghost from his past: a residential school priest. That officer was journalist Connie Walker’s late father. What happened that night on the side of the road compelled her to return home to Saskatchewan nearly 40 years later to try to investigate a secret in her own family. What she uncovers is a much bigger story. 

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Last week the Supreme Court made an historic ruling upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act. Rebecca Nagle takes us inside the courtroom to break down the decision, how we got here, and what it all means.

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While we wait to see whether the Supreme Court takes the case, we attend a ceremony run by a program that helps Native adoptees reconnect with their tribes. 

Show Notes

• This Land website https://crooked.com/podcast-series/this-land/
• Resources For Survivors https://crooked.com/resources-for-survivors/
• Resources For Journalists & Investigators https://crooked.com/resources-for-journalists-investigators/
• Have a tip? Share it with our reporting team via SecureDrop https://criticalfrequency.org/securedrop/

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As the case heads to the Fifth Circuit - the last stop before the Supreme Court - we go inside the courtroom to hear the arguments and the decision.

Show Notes

• This Land website https://crooked.com/podcast-series/this-land/
• Resources For Survivors https://crooked.com/resources-for-survivors/
• Resources For Journalists & Investigators https://crooked.com/resources-for-journalists-investigators/
• Have a tip? Share it with our reporting team via SecureDrop https://criticalfrequency.org/securedrop/
• Jennifer Brackeen’s Personal Blog https://web.archive.org/web/20201221201802/https://thebrackeens.blogspot.com/

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We know which law firms and think tanks are bringing these lawsuits, but no one has been able to figure out who’s funding them—or why—until now. 

Show Notes

• This Land website https://crooked.com/podcast-series/this-land/
• Resources For Survivors https://crooked.com/resources-for-survivors/
• Resources For Journalists & Investigators https://crooked.com/resources-for-journalists-investigators/
• Have a tip? Share it with our reporting team via SecureDrop https://criticalfrequency.org/securedrop/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.