By the Fire We Carry Audiobook By Rebecca Nagle cover art

By the Fire We Carry

The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

By the Fire We Carry

By: Rebecca Nagle
Narrated by: Rebecca Nagle
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $24.67

Buy for $24.67

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

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.

©2024 Rebecca Nagle (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers
Americas Civil Rights & Liberties Freedom & Security Indigenous Peoples Indigenous Studies Murder Politics & Government Social Sciences Specific Demographics True Crime United States Oklahoma American History

What listeners say about By the Fire We Carry

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.