jess_justmaybeperfect 's review for:

By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle

5.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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By the Fire We Carry explores the history of the Indigenous Nations forced by violence and theft into what we now know as Oklahoma and the 2020 US Supreme Court decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which led to the restoration of land several Nations were promised by treaty in the 1800s.

With research, personal accounts, family history, moments of joy, and honesty, Nagle has created a moving, emotional, and unputdownable book. 

Nagle highlights previous devastating US Supreme Court decisions (a reminder that RBG wasn’t always great), the systematic violence and terror unleashed upon indigenous people, constant treaty violations, the complicated roles leaders play in the events that impact their citizens, and the realities of hoping the branches of the US government will actually balance each other. All are, sadly, evergreen.

I first started following Nagle with her podcast This Land (which covers McGirt v. Oklahoma and the case decided with it) and really enjoyed this book on audio, she narrates.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism