‘We’re still here’: A new book explores how a small-town murder led to the restoration of Indigenous land

Rebecca Nagle is an award-winning journalist and podcaster. Season 2 of her podcast “This Land,” from Crooked Media which delved into the 40 year-long fight over the Indian Child Welfare Act was nominated for a Peabody Award.  

Her new book “By the Fire We Carry: The Generations Long Fight for Justice on Native Land” deeply reports the history behind the landmark McGirt v. Oklahoma decision, which resulted in the largest transfer of Native land in recent history. The book weaves together personal history, memoir, legal history and Native history to tell the story. 

APM Reports’ Allison Herrera interviewed Rebecca Nagle, who is speaking at Birchbark Bizhiw in Minneapolis Wednesday night. Birchbark is owned by Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich.

Can you tell us the name of your book and a brief synopsis of it? 

Rebecca Nagle: So, “By the Fire We Carry: The Generations Long Fight for Justice on Native Land” tells the story of a Supreme Court case that resulted in the largest restoration of tribal land in US history-a Supreme Court case that was decided in 2020 called McGirt v. Oklahoma.  

That case actually started in a surprising place as a murder in 1999. A Muscogee Nation citizen killed another Muscogee citizen and was sentenced to death by the state of Oklahoma. And in the course of his death penalty appeals, his lawyers came up with this novel legal theory that Oklahoma actually didn't have jurisdiction to prosecute him in the first place because the crime occurred on the Muscogee Nation's reservation. Oklahoma argued that that reservation had not existed in over 100 years. And so that question of whether or not there was still a reservation, whether or not Congress had ever gotten rid of it, was eventually settled by the Supreme Court in 2020. 
 
So, the book closely follows the story of the case and it also talks about the history of our tribes being removed from our homelands in the southeast to west of the Mississippi and then the story of how Oklahoma was created on top of those treaty territories. 

You’ve worked across different genres. You’ve hosted two podcasts. You’ve written for various publications — what made you want to write a book? 

Nagle: There's a depth and a breadth that you can go into in a book that you can't do in a magazine article or even in a podcast. That was what really drew me to it.  

And specifically for this book, I wanted the story of this important and historic Supreme Court case to be well documented and I also wanted to tell that story alongside the history-because a lot of the times in the in the course of the litigation, Oklahoma, would say things like, ‘okay, well, yeah, bad things happened to the tribe, but that's not really a reason to uphold the reservation today.’ And I wanted to really highlight that history that they had brushed aside and the cruelty of the history that they had brushed aside. 

I wanted, especially tribal citizens in eastern Oklahoma, to have a deep understanding of the background and the history of this case. And I also wrote the book because I think that in telling the story of this one specific case, it hits on some really important themes, and I think that this history of the dispossession of Indigenous nations, of our land and our sovereignty, and really the colonization and the genocide of Indigenous nations is not just a problem for our tribes, but is a problem for our democracy. 

Where did you get the title: ‘By the Fire We Carry?’

Nagle: It was inspired by a line from a Joy Harjo poem-the poem's actually at the beginning of the book. It's called “Returning from the Enemy.” And the line goes, “I keep warm by the fire carried through cruelty.” And what Harjo is writing about is, you know, part of our identity as tribes in the southeast is that we had fires that our communities would share.  And during the heartbreak and the trauma and the extreme violence of removal, people brought those fires with us, where they still burn in Oklahoma today. 

Let’s talk about the Carpenter v. Murphy case, which you deeply report in this book, which became the McGirt case that was decided in 2020. For audiences here in Minnesota, can you talk about how these cases originated and the questions presented in them? 

Nagle: So, the Carpenter v. Murphy is for Patrick Murphy. In 1999, he murdered a man named George Jacobs. It was a pretty vicious murder, and he was sentenced to death by the state of Oklahoma. In 2004 a public defender, a federal public defender started poking around his case and came up with this argument that Oklahoma didn't have jurisdiction because the crime happened in what's legally called Indian country.  

So, states can't prosecute crimes committed by Native people on tribal land, and so they were trying to basically save their client's life by making this argument.  In 2017, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with that argument and said, you know, the reservation of Muscogee Nation was never disestablished. That was the case that got appealed to the Supreme Court. And then there was another twist and another turn, where the Supreme Court-actually one of the justices had to abstain from that vote because they had participated in a procedural vote when it was at the 10th circuit.  They were stuck with just eight. And the theory, we don't know for sure, but the theory is that they were stuck in a four-four tie.  

So what had happened with Mr. McGirt is that Jimcy McGirt was serving a life sentence for sexually abusing a child in Oklahoma. He saw the news coverage of Patrick Murphy winning in that appeals court. And he said, ‘Well, I'm Native. My crime happened on the Muskogee reservation.’ And he, with sort of a group of jailhouse lawyers, filed his own petitions and was able to appeal his case all the way to the Supreme Court without a lawyer. And the Supreme Court decided to take it because they could hear that case with a full nine justices.  

Can you talk about why you decided to tell the story in this way? Because you weave together your own personal history, this legal history, all of this archival research and Native history to present the story about the Carpenter v. Murphy and then McGirt decision? 

Nagle: The personal story is woven in there; I think for selfish reasons. It's how I came to why this case was really important. So, the case was specifically about the Muscogee reservation, but I knew that whatever the Supreme Court held about the Muscogee reservation would likely apply to my tribe, to the Cherokee Nation. And ultimately it did. Ultimately it applied to eight other tribes in eastern Oklahoma.  

My ancestors made a controversial decision that changed the fate of the Cherokee Nation. They signed our removal treaty. And so, this land that is in question of whether or not this land is still a Cherokee reservation is land that my ancestors fought for, and they're actually assassinated for that decision. And so, they actually died for it. And so, I felt this visceral sense of justice with this idea that the land that my family had died for could be Cherokee land again for the first time in 100 years.  

A section of the book that I just found really profound — when you write about the assassination and the debate within your family about whether it’s right or wrong. You write, I think it was your grandmother that said that she thought that it wasn’t right, what happened to the Ridges, and you don’t agree

I wanted you to talk a little bit about why you decided to write this really personal history that has created such bitter divisions. I mean, within the Cherokee Nation. Why talk about that? 

Nagle: It is a sensitive topic that does anger a lot of people to this day. So my great, great, great grandfather is John ridge, and along with his dad, Major Ridge, were prominent leaders of Cherokee Nation, and in the 1830s, by the 1830s, the U.S. had come up with this policy that all Indigenous nations living within what was then the boundaries of the United States had to move west of the Mississippi. And the Ridges spent years fighting that proposal, fighting it within the Cherokee Nation. Also fighting it in the halls of Congress, they took the fight all the way to the Supreme Court. None of their efforts made a difference. And they thought that they came to a place where they thought the only way that Cherokees as a people and a nation would survive was removal, was to agree to move west.  

And ultimately, they decided to sign a removal treaty against the will and the government of the Cherokee people. I spent a lot of time with their writing and why they made that decision. They were very public about why they were doing it, and I also spent a lot of time with what Cherokees had to say about it at the time through, you know, their petitions to Congress trying to fight the treaty to be ratified. Their argument was, you know, look, we know that our situation is bad, but it's up to us how we're going to get out of it, you know. And it's not right for a small group of people to decide that for us. And ultimately, I agreed, you know. And I think what my ancestors did, I think that they made the wrong decision.  

I think it was wrong for them to go against the will and the government of the Cherokee people. But I think that they did it for the right reason, and that they were looking at the future and trying to find a path forward where we would survive. And so while they might be remembered as traitors by a majority of Cherokee people, which I think they actually accepted before they died, I think that they knew that that's how they would be seen, what they truly cared about, I believe, did come true, which is that Cherokees as a nation and a people are still here.  

That’ll be so great for people to read more about in the book. Why did you choose to have a speaking engagement here in Minneapolis at Birchbark Bizhiw? 

Nagle: Well, I'm a huge fan of Louise Erdrich. Also, it's really nice. It's hard to write a book because you live in a little hole for years with your pile of documents and your edits and your revisions, and it can be kind of solitary. But I'm motivated to write by the way that my work lives in the world. And so, one of the things that I have just loved about these events is being able to connect with people in person and have conversations. See what questions people have about the book and see how it's living in the world. So I'm really excited to connect with folks here in Minneapolis. 

Event details

• When: Wednesday, Sept. 25, 7-8:30 p.m. 

• Where: Birchbark Bizhiw, 1629 Hennepin Ave #275, Minneapolis

The audio conversation has been edited for time.

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