"By the Fire We Carry": Cherokee Author Rebecca Nagle on the Ongoing Fight for Tribal Sovereignty

this is democracy Now democracynow.org the Warren peace report I'm amimi Goodman with nuring SH we end Today's Show with the awardwinning Cherokee writer and journalist Rebecca Nagel she's the author of the new book by the fire we carry the generations long fight for justice on native land the book looks at the more than a century long fight for tribal sovereignty in Eastern Oklahoma and what it says about democracy and the American Empire Rebecca Nagel also explored the issue in the podcast this land which was nominated for a pey award in 2021 Rebecca joins us here in New York it's great to have you with us lay out the stories that you tell here in the book yeah so the book goes into mcgury Oklahoma which was a Supreme Court decision in 2020 that resulted in the largest restoration of tribal land in US history and that case actually started in a surprising place it started as a murder in 1999 and the Man convicted of murder Patrick Murphy was sentenced to death by the state of Oklahoma and his Federal public defender came up with a novel legal Theory she said you know what Oklahoma didn't have jurisdiction to prosecute this man let alone sentence him to death because the crime happened on his tribe's reservation Mogi nation's reservation the state of Oklahoma said well that reservation not only does it not exist it hasn't existed for over a hundred years and that question went all the way to the Supreme Court and really what this case was a test of the law was clearly on the tribes side and the question was would the Supreme Court followed the law or would it capitulate to the demands of non-native residents in the state of Oklahoma and say well that's what the treaty says and that's what Congress says but we're not really going to follow it and the significance of mcgurt you know isn't that the Supreme Court overturned anything or stried anything down but it was just that the court when it came to indigenous rights followed the law and sadly that's quite rare and talk about the the Cherokee Nation leader major Ridge yeah so major Ridge is uh my great great great great grandfather um and he made a controversial decision along with his son John Ridge that impacted the history of our tribe and so in the 1830s um the US government had an unrelenting policy of ethnic cleansing saying that all indigenous Nations basically live Liv within the us at that time had to move west of the Mississippi um and the state of Georgia was terrorizing Cherokees on their own land and my ancestors decided against the will and the government of Cherokee people that the best way for Cherokees as a people and as a nation to survive was to move west so they signed our tribes removal treaty What followed that was the Trail of Tears so us militia men and army soldiers literally rounded Cherokees up at gunpoint uh hted our tribe into open air stockades marched people West and a quarter of the population dies and so the book also shares that story to talk about why the Contemporary land rights matter how many generations of sacrifice have led to Supreme Court decisions like this one can you talk about the Trail of Tears Rebecca um and talk about um the story of how it is sanitized and what exactly the 80,000 people that were Force West what we're taught in school if we're taught anything and what in fact you unveil and reveal and many Native Americans know yeah I mean it's a little wild but historians actually still debate whether or not the US committed genocide you know um the term at the time didn't exist it was coined uh in 1944 during the Holocaust um the Cherokee word for our removal is it literally means when they drove us it's the same word um that we use to talk about hurting animals and so the Army built 25 open air stockades and in 25 days they rounded up 15,000 people and hurted them into those open air stockades uh one of the women that was being hurted was actually given birth and they wouldn't let her rest um and she eventually just sort of laid down on the ground and died um there was no uh San ation or shelter in the stockades and in a few months um thousands of people had died people then had to uh walk west um and you know the the estimate is that 4,000 people died there's a contemporary scholar that says with the sharp decline in birth rates um the total death toll is probably or the total loss of life is probably closer to 10,000 and that's out of a population of 16,000 and I think people have this vague notion that you know people had to walk a long ways and a lot of people died and it was tragic but I think we don't have a concept of how violent um some of these chapters of our history are and and how we haven't gone back as a country and said okay we committed genocide this was wrong we need to change our laws we need to make sure that something like this hasn't ever H doesn't ever happen again we've just um we've just moved on and forgotten about it I mean it's a deeply historical book but if you could talk about how these policy still inform American law today absolutely and so um there's some great work by a legal scholar named black Maggie Blackhawk and she really lays be the way that the the policies and the power our government gave itself to dispossess indigenous peoples of our land still governs how we treat people living at the margins of us Empire and so when our government wanted to ban Muslims from entering our country separate migrants at the border um detain enemy combatants indefinitely Or suspend the international rules of war to fight Terror it used principles of federal Indian law to do so and so a lot of times we treat you know Native American history like this distant chapter and the legal terrain it created as some sort of siloed Backwater of American law but actually it's foundational talk about the title of your book Rebecca um by the fire we carry yeah it's um it's inspired by a joy Haro poem and the line in the poem is um I keep warm by a fire carried through cruelty and um one of the things that our Southeastern tribes share is that um we had mother towns and people were connected by our ceremonial fires and during the Trail of Tears um people brought their fires and those fires still burn in Oklahoma and so it's the literal fire that um our tribes have kept all these years but it is also um you know the symbolic fire of our our our continued fight um for justice on native land so this is uh an election year uh as we approach if you could say as we approach November what's at stake for indigenous people in this election you know it's to me what is frustrating is I think that native voters often get left out you know we saw election night in 2020 CNN called native voters in the state of Arizona literally something else um we're not seeing native people talked about an election coverage even though we're key constituencies in swing States like Arizona Michigan Wisconsin um and so we need political leaders to really pay attention you know one of the key issues affecting tribes right now is how criminal jurisdiction works on reservations and so tribes are actually prohibited from Prosecuting non-native people who commit crimes on our land not for all but for most crimes and that's something that Congress and the president could help fix so I mean and that's just one example of many um and we really need not just politicians but sort of our media to pay more attention to um issues that are important to Native voters well we want to thank you for being with us Welcome to New York Rebecca Nagel Cherokee writer award-winning journalist her new book is titled by the fire we carry the generations la long fight for justice on native land that does it for our show uh democracy and I was produced with Mike burer feler shus Messiah roads and Maria terasa Tammy War Trina Nur Sam alov T Mario John Hamilton Rabbi Karen honey massud and H ellias our executive director is Julie Crosby special thanks to Becca Staley John Rand Paul Powell Mike to Filippo Miguel Nera Hugh Gran Dennis Moon David prud Dennis McCormack Matt elely and OBC Emily Anderson and Buffy St Marie Hernandez I'm Amy Goodman with n Shay thanks for joining us