Quite a few years ago I came across Rebecca Nagle’s podcast “This Land”, in which she accompanied first one, then another court case that each turned into a struggle over Indigenous land and rights in the so-called USA. In one instance, the murder of a man caused a reconsideration of territory and demarcation of a reservation, and in another, the connection between Roe v. Wade and for-profit adoption under capitalism was investigated. It turns out, to the surprise of no one, that there are still strong, church-led efforts to violently remove Indigenous children from their families and communities and go so far as to question ICWA (the “Indian Child Welfare Act”). I had assumed that this book would cover little I hadn’t already heard before, but I was pleasantly surprised that I was wrong.
By the Fire we Carry is an incredibly dense introduction to modern Indigenous history in the so-called US, bringing readers closer to the many (at times confusingly so) actors involved in defending and attacking Indigenous claims to land, while never ceasing to illuminate the hardships of activism on the individuals upholding movements. 

Nagle repeatedly gets unbelievably close to making the connections between the settler colony as an entity and perpetrator, capitalism and Indigenous governance only to step away from that connection at the very last minute and water down her calls for justice by calling for strengthening reservations only. Especially given the earlier sections of the book, I found this quite unfortunate, with Nagle describing scorched-earth policies, the violence of the homestead act and the racist infantilization of Indigenous peoples due to the perceived inability to understand capitalist success by early colonizers. While the Cherokee, Nagle states, resisted allotment and advocated for communal land and the absence of homelessness or poor (Leaving the formerly enslaved by the Cherokee out of the equation, I guess?), allotment was eventually forced upon people and communities fractured and incentivized to turn each other in and testify against one another. Even present day protections such as the application of tribal law on tribal land can only be applied to Indigenous peoples, leaving 92% of the perpetrators of violence again MMIWG (missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls) untouched by the law or by justice. 

By the Fire We Carry is an admirable feat, summing up years of engaging reporting and contextualizing these stories in a much broader history of not only Indigenous resistance, but Indigenous life, governance and at times moral ambiguity, bringing an end to the idealization (and “positive” racism) of Indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, Nagle could not repeat the momentum of her podcasts and stops short of radical analysis in favour of liberal integration without meaningful critique of the so-called US that could connect her narrative not with the oppressor but other oppressed groups.

I strongly recommend listening to This Land by Rebecca Nagle and Crooked Media.