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

The rise of Native American sovereignty has taken many twists and turns over the past 300-plus years— from when the first European settlers encountered Native American groups, the forced displacement of Native Americans to reservations, to the rise of Native American nationalism in the 1970s. There has been a legal fight, that was largely settled in 2020 by the US Supreme Court, over tribal land and sovereignty that this book chronicles in a large overlapping arc starting back in the 1800s when the Muscogee people were forced into Oklahoma, the fight over land and oil rights, to the final decision granting large swaths of these lands as sovereign to tribal nations where they can police and take their own actions. This book is largely historical, although it primarily focuses on the 2020 US Supreme Court case and the Native Americans of Oklahoma, rather than discussing other groups fighting for justice. People interested in how Native Americans fought the long fight, across multiple generations, for justice will learn a lot from this book, including attempts by local leaders in Oklahoma to make sure they left the Natives Americans as second-class citizens.