Read Into It! is a monthly book club where we explore the ideas, systems, and stories that shape our world through a variety of nonfiction.
From niche histories and personal memoirs to cultural commentary and investigative journalism, each selection invites us to question our assumptions and explore new perspectives.
In November, we are reading By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle.
"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.
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."
A limited number of copies of the book selection are available at the circulation desk downstairs.