Ep. 359 It’s Rooted in Our Past with Rebecca Nagle

Written By Megan Caballero

This week, journalist and activist Rebecca Nagle joins us to discuss her debut book, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land. We discuss her decision to expand her podcast, This Land, into a book, the deliberate erasure of Indigenous people in the United States, and how she approaches the idea of "objectivity" in journalism.

The Stacks Book Club pick for February is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. We will discuss the book on February 26th with Ira Madison III returning as our guest.

 
 

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Rebecca Nagle 0:00

We have this story as Americans that while we had some fundamental flaws, our country has gotten better, and we've been a country of progress. And we we started with this amazing idea of all men being created equal, and in each generation, we've sort of perfected that idea more and more and more well, native people don't fit into that story, right? We don't fit into that story at all because where is our Supreme Court decision ending our legal subordination? Where's our constitutional amendment? You know?

Traci Thomas 0:42

Welcome to the stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Traci Thomas, and today I am joined by Rebecca Nagle. Rebecca is a Cherokee writer and activist known for her insightful reporting on Native issues and advocacy for indigenous rights. Her latest book, by the fire we carry the generations long fight for justice on native land delves into the forced removal of Native Americans in the 1830s and the pivotal 2020 Supreme Court case that reaffirmed native land rights in Oklahoma. Today, Rebecca and I talk about how she turned her podcast, this land into this very book. We talk about the history of erasure of indigenous people in the United States, and we talk about what we can learn from this history in the face of this current political moment. Don't forget our February book club pick is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Ira Madison the third will be back on Wednesday, February 26 to discuss the book with me. Be sure to read along and tune in everything we talk about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. And if you love this podcast and you want inside access to it, you can join the stacks pack by going to patreon.com/the stacks and or you could subscribe to my newsletter, unstacked at Traci Thomas, dot sub stack.com by joining either or both of these communities, you help make it possible for me to make this podcast every single week, and I'm Still getting through the list of folks who earn that shout out on the show. So huge. Thank you to the following people, Vanessa Armstrong, Traci lane, Meg Avery Ramsey, Ellie canard, Darcy Brice ca Jones, Katie Hendon, Anna Ryan, Rebecca M drew hack, Aubrey, Abel, Carrie, Jill, Johnson Taylor, Max Elliott, Kai Bumpus, Vanessa, Kramer, Sohan and Laurie. Thank you all so much, and shout out to everyone who makes this show possible. All right, now it's time for my conversation with Rebecca Nagle.

Okay, I am so excited today I'm joined by Rebecca Nagel. Her book, which came out towards the second half of last year, is called by the fire we carry the generations long fight for justice on native land. The book is incredibly good. I am. I think Rebecca newest fan. I think a lot of you probably already know Rebecca, because she's the host of the this land podcast, but I'm new here. So Rebecca, welcome to the stacks. Thank you so much for having me. This is, I mean, this book is so good. You reached out to me and you were like, I wrote this book. I think you and your audience might like it. And I was like, okay, cool. And then I just sort of like, put it in my pile, and I just picked it up, and I was like, this book is so good. How did she know I was gonna love this book? So thank you for knowing my taste and also telling me that I needed to read your book. I'm so grateful because it's fantastic. And for people who don't know what the book is about, in about 30 seconds or so, can you sort of give us the groundwork here. Yeah,

Rebecca Nagle 3:42

so the book covers a Supreme Court case that resulted in the largest restoration of tribal land in US history. But that case started in a surprising place. It actually started as a small town murder in 1999 so the book sort of follows the case all the way from the original crime to the Supreme Court victory, and then interspersed, like every other chapter, is actually the history of our tribes being removed from our homelands in the southeast onto land, onto treaty territories that then Oklahoma was created on top of. So, yeah, that's the book.

Traci Thomas 4:18

It's like so many different things. I want to talk a little bit about about how you sort of weaved all these different things together. But what I want to start with is What first got you interested in this case, in this story, when did you come to this work?

Rebecca Nagle 4:34

Yeah, so I found out about this Supreme Court case actually through a Muskogee legal scholar named Sarah dear so in the summer of 2017 the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the appeals court that's just one step below the Supreme Court, ruled on the case, and she posted about it on Facebook, and at that point, I, like many people, hadn't actually heard of the case before. Yeah, and then once I saw was going to the Supreme Court and had this potential to not only uphold the Muskogee reservation, but that I saw that it, you know, whatever the courts decided would likely apply to my tribe, Cherokee Nation, too. And I just became obsessed.

Traci Thomas 5:18

So relatable I can imagine when you first started kind of getting into the case, did you all you already knew that it was going to be connected, like you already kind of saw what the implications were, or was there something that sort of triggered that bigger understanding for you? Yeah, I

Rebecca Nagle 5:36

think the general consensus and assumption going into it was that whatever the Supreme Court decided about the Muskogee reservation would probably apply to all five tribes in eastern Oklahoma. So just to back up a little bit, in the early 1900s and 1907 the state of Oklahoma was created. And before Oklahoma was a state all the land that is now Oklahoma was actually the treaty territory of dozens of tribes, and since Oklahoma became a state, it has acted as if the reservations within its boundaries no longer exist. And so by the time we get to 2020, which is when this case was decided by the Supreme Court, the Muscogee reservation had not been legally recognized by the state government for over a century, and that might sound like a reservation no longer exists, but legally, that's just not how it works. For a reservation to no longer exist, Congress has to get rid of it. And so the central question in this case, which actually started as a death penalty appeal, you know, man on death row saying, Hey, hold on, Oklahoma, you don't have jurisdiction. The central question was whether or not the Muscogee reservation still existed. And what that boiled down to was, did Congress ever get rid of it? And those acts that Congress passed, while the allotment agreement with Muscogee nation was specific to the tribe, a lot of the laws that Congress passed to break up tribal land and to create the state of Oklahoma applied to all five tribes here in eastern Oklahoma, which is the Muskogee, the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw and the Seminole. And so our reservations cover about half, little less than half, of the land in Oklahoma. And because those laws are the same historically, the thinking was, well, whatever the Supreme Court interprets those laws to mean for the Muskogee reservation will probably apply to all of our tribes, and it eventually did, and so that's one of the reasons why the stakes were so high for both sides. You know, it's because the amount of land that we're talking about, you know, half the land in Oklahoma, it's about 19 million acres. It's the size. It's larger than West Virginia and nine other US states, and you know, like I said, it ended up resulting in the largest restoration of tribal land in US history. So we've never had that kind of that level or that scale of restoration of land to tribes before in our country. Can

Traci Thomas 8:17

you explain to me, to us how this relationship with reservations is different than what like I'm in California. I spent time in Colorado. I'm sort of familiar with like in Colorado, the ute reservations. And how is it different? Like, how? How come these reservations in Oklahoma were never really recognized or treated as such for hundreds of years, when, I think folks who are in western states are familiar with reservations as sort of being these, like, cordoned off areas.

Rebecca Nagle 8:48

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so we're definitely not the only reservations that went through this. But we went through a thing called allotment. So at the end of the 1800s the US government and its you know, benevolent wisdom always. You know, air quotes. Smartest

Traci Thomas 9:06

geniuses

Rebecca Nagle 9:07

decided that instead of using violence and war to force native people onto shrinking reservations, it would assimilate native people to white society by privatizing communally held lands. So, you know, prior to the 1900s like in the late 1800s all the land that belonged to Mugi nation was owned communally by the tribe. So a Mugi citizen could have, like a farm on that land or build a house, and like, they own the farm and they own the house, but the land was held communally by the tribe, and so what Congress really forced pretty violently on the tribes. You know, the tribes try to protest. They try to prevent it, but it did eventually happen was this policy where the government came in, they divided up all of the land and they assigned individual parcels to each Muskogee citizen. And. Same thing you know happened in all five tribes, and so now, instead of the land being owned by the tribe, the land was owned by the individual citizen. And in the lead up to that, because the tribal governments weren't cooperating, the federal government did a lot to diminish tribal sovereignty. So they did things like seize our take control of our schools, take control of our courts. They seized tribal properties and tribal buildings to basically bully the tribes into agreeing to allotment. And so it's this period where, you know, our sovereignty is really diminished, but there's a difference between diminishing tribal sovereignty and getting rid of it, if that makes sense. And so Oklahoma's argument in the case, since argument all along, was like, Okay, well, like, look at everything that Congress took away from the tribes during this time. Surely they didn't mean to leave a reservation. And what the Supreme Court ultimately ruled was like, Well, you know, if Congress wants to get rid of a reservation, it needs to do what it does in any other area of the law, which is to put that in writing. You know, we can't, like, look into a crystal ball and think that, okay, well, this is what Congress meant to do. So, yeah, so that's kind of the rundown of what happened here in eastern Oklahoma in the lead up to Oklahoma statehood that became the basis for this idea that there were no longer reservations.

Traci Thomas 11:27

Okay, thank you. So I want to go back to you a little bit. You get involved. You get interested in this case, you start going doing rabbit holes. All of a sudden, you decide I want to turn this into a podcast. And then you decide I want to turn this podcast into a book. Can you talk about that? Because I feel like that's pretty rare that a podcast becomes a book in this sort of way.

Rebecca Nagle 11:53

Yeah, yeah, you know, I just wasn't done. I, you know, I think that the book, it's almost like the book covers, like similar terrain, but different ground, if that makes sense. Okay,

Traci Thomas 12:09

say more. Say more. Yeah, I did a lot

Rebecca Nagle 12:12

of original, I mean, I did a ton of original research for the book, just because, you know, there's a place in the book that you can go deep and you can go far and you can go wide, that you just, you can't do for audio, just sort of the way that people listen and the information that they can take in is just so different. And so, you know, for the court case, I went back to, like, the original transcripts from the 2000 trial and literally read every piece of paper that had been filed in, you know, two decades, which, if you can imagine, was a lot, yes. And then for the historical research, I went through a bunch of primary sources and found some new stories that I felt were compelling. And so, yeah, I mean, I think just the depth and the breadth of the research and the stories that I was able to draw out of that research are are are unique to the book. So, yeah, there was, I felt like there was still a lot I had to say at the end of the podcast, and also a lot as, like a researcher and a reporter that I wanted to learn, yeah, and so it was really exciting to have the space of a book to do that. I

Traci Thomas 13:16

love that. And when you were thinking about writing the book, were you thinking about audience in any particular way, knowing that you did have this audience from the podcast, was that your work? Yeah, I

Rebecca Nagle 13:28

mean, I was hoping that a lot of people who were fans of the podcast would follow it to the book. And I mean, I don't know if there's like, any perfect way to measure that, but anecdotally, from like being on tour with the book, and like meeting readers in person. It does seem like that's how a lot of people came to the book. And so that's exciting. You know, I'm really grateful for the people who've like stayed with my work and supported it all of these years. And you know, in general, you know, I think a lot about writing for both tribal citizens here in Oklahoma, you know, there were a lot of questions people in my community had about the case while it was going on and then particularly afterwards. And so I and I also wanted you know this, this case is historic and is an important moment in history, and its whole history hadn't been really documented, you know, and I think people kind of knew the last year or so that I was at the Supreme Court, but that's only sort of a piece of the whole story of this case, and I really wanted to document that story. And so for me, that's how the book is kind of in service to my native community. But then also, you know, I really write for non native people too. And really want folks who are not native to understand, you know, legally, what a jurisdiction, what a reservation is. You know how jurisdiction works on a reservations, what are these, like, big concepts and federal Indian law, and where do they come from? And I think you're like, average. Reader isn't like, gonna sit down and read, you know, like an anthology about federal Indian law, because, you know, like, unless you're in law school who wants to read that right? And so it's what I do with my writing, is try to include that information, but through story and also through I think what really comes through in the story is why these laws and why these issues matter in the first place?

Traci Thomas 15:25

Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, what grabbed me about this book is the way that you tell the story, right? It's like you really bring in these different pieces of history, both more recent, like the actual murder case from the 1990s all the way back to, you know, things that predate the Trail of Tears and really, like, weave it together. And one of the other pieces that you bring to the book that I want to ask you about is your own personal opinion. You weigh in on what you think or how you feel about certain things. Specifically, you have ancestors who are involved in signing a treaty that led to the Trail of Tears, and they are very polarizing. Some people really don't fuck with them, and you sort of like, lay out their whole story, and then you tell us what you think of them. And I was really taken by that moment in the book, because I actually wasn't expecting it. I sort of was expecting you to be like and that's what happened, and these are my family members in certain ways. I'm like, I'm not gonna go there. So I'm wondering about how you approached, if you were gonna weigh in, versus just reporting, if you were gonna let us know what you thought, or guide your reader in any way on some of the ethical questions. And there's other ones that come up about Friedman, the ancestors of freedmen who were enslaved, who are black people, who were enslaved by different tribal nations, who then were trying to get their allotment, or their piece of their allotment, or what their inheritance of the land. And you weigh in on that as well. So I'm curious about bringing your opinion to the text? Yeah,

Rebecca Nagle 17:02

absolutely. I mean, I think that, you know, there can be this idea that can be prevalent, I think, among historians and also among journalists that are our job, or our task is just to relay the facts. And I question that, because I'm sort of like, why gather all of this information, if not to make sense of it? Yeah. And I think that whenever we collect information and we transmit it, you know, we are making a million choices that is putting meaning onto the information that we were conveying. I don't think there's an objective way to do journalism. I think people who argue about objectivity are just like defaulting to like a pretty like white version, like a white world view without wanting to admit it. And so the way I approach it is, because I do think about the ethics of my perspective and where I come from and how I see things and how that informs how I write. And for me, the way to do that ethically is just transparency, and it's just to be really clear and really honest about who I am and where I come from and how I see things and how that informs how I write. But yeah, I mean, even just, you know, the example of telling the story of my ancestors, you know, who signed the Treaty of New Echota, which was Cherokee Nation's removal Treaty, which signed away our homelands for lands west of the Mississippi, and ultimately resulted in the Trail of Tears, where an estimated quarter of the population died, and, you know, my ancestors signed that document. And so I think that there's a lot to actually learn from their story, beyond this question of like, did they make the right decision, or did they make the wrong decision? I, you know, I ultimately kind of land that, I think that they made the wrong decision, but for the right reasons. Yeah, um, I think they were, they, they, they were trying their best to ensure the survival of Cherokee Nation at a time that that felt really perilous. And I think that that desperation really tells a version of American history that we don't often hear. And I think that perspective of indigenous leaders very worried that their nation would no longer exist and making compromises that are unthinkable, I think is an important an important perspective for people to learn about.

Traci Thomas 19:42

And I think what's really interesting and what is so, you know, I guess obvious when we talk about history is like it does repeat itself. But in the book, we meet the leader of the Muskogee nation, you know, as this is going through the Supreme Court. And. And he's sort of dealing with these same questions of like, do we do we bring an amicus brief along with this case? Because if we do, and we lose, what happens to us, you know? And so he's sort of also grappling with these similar questions of like, how can we continue to exist in the face of the US government and all of the fucked up shit that they are constantly trying to do to our people. And I found that kind of parallel to be really interesting, and something that maybe I would have missed had you not included the history of of John and Major Ridge, speaking of all of these pieces, sort of reporting, being a historian, being a memoirist or opinion writer, if you will. Which of these pieces was easiest for you and which of this stuff was harder for you? Where did you struggle? Where did you find it to kind of be smooth?

Rebecca Nagle 20:53

Oh, I mean, I think the hardest thing was the combination, you know, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the hardest thing, you know, I get obsessive when it comes to research, and I'm kind of like a completist. So I'd like, if I'm researching a topic, I want to know, like everything that's ever been written about it, and probably like too much. But I'm just like, Oh, cool. I'm like, you know, when I find, like, a, you know, a box of, like, 1000s of papers. I'm like, yay. Look at all these records, yay. So yeah, I mean, but, and I think then the very, very, very difficult task is because just writing a summary of all of that research would be easy, right? Like, yeah, it would just be a summary. But I think the harder thing to write is the story and the meaning through those things and using that research towards that end, and really like synthesizing it into something that makes a lot of sense. And so I try really hard for my writing to be accessible, and that's a value that's really important to me. I don't want it to just live in this space of academia. And so it's really important for me that people who are not trying to read a history book or not trying to read a law book can pick this book up and read it and get it, but also, like, learn all of this stuff, right? And so that, to me, is the hardest. Was the hardest part of writing it, and it just took a lot of iterations. So usually the first draft was like, way too much information, like way, way too much information. And then, you know, in stages, you would cut it down and cut it back and cut it down,

Traci Thomas 22:44

and how did you know if it was accessible? Like, with you, I feel like sometimes when I have, like, a lot of information that I know a lot about, and I can get really in the weeds. So when you're relaying the information to us in that editing process, are you relying on outside people who are reading it to give you feedback, or is it something that you can sort of self edit on your own and know, like, this is too far. Yeah. I mean,

Rebecca Nagle 23:08

I, um, I do a lot of self editing, and then I did have, I did have folks, um, obviously had, like, my editor, but then I had folks along the process reading it and giving feedback, you know, and trying to get, like, fresh eyes on it and stuff. One thing I do, too is I try to take a break. So I'll sort of walk away from a writing project and put it down for like a week or two and then come back to it. And I also would, I wrote the book and then edited it in these big chunks. So I try to, I try to come at editing from a lot of different angles. And, like, almost, I mean, it sounds kind of gimmicky, but like, change my perspective as I'm editing it by, like, pacing the edits in different ways and editing for different things at different stages, to try and, you know, put myself in that place of the reader, because you're right, it is really hard when you're you're in it to, like, see the forest for the trees. Sometimes

Traci Thomas 24:10

when you take your break before you know, you go back to editor, like, when you kind of give yourself that break, do you what do you go to? Do you work on other projects? Do you go on vacation. Are you just, like, watching reality TV and taking a break? Like, what does that break actually look like for you?

Rebecca Nagle 24:28

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, you know, one of the like, vacation time off, yeah, like time for my brain to just zone out. So, you know, at one point I had like, a two week vacation plan. And then at one point I was like, I actually didn't know I was gonna hit the deadline for turning in like, the full first rough draft of the book. And I was, like, a little bit behind. So I couldn't, like, I couldn't, like, plan a trip somewhere like that wasn't gonna happen, right? And so I just did, like, a staycation. And in the town where I live, there's a river. Forever. That's like, really fun to like, float and, you know, cook out on and stuff. And so I just took a week off. And like, you know, one day went to a gravel bar with a friend, and then another day went on a went on a float trip by myself, went on a float trip with another friend, went on a float trip

Traci Thomas 25:15

with another friend. So much floating.

Rebecca Nagle 25:17

I just, yeah, I like, I can be a little bit of a river at in the summer, so I just sort of like, hung out on the river for a week. Did like hikes? Was just like out in nature, and that really helped clear my head. I

Traci Thomas 25:28

love that. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay, we're back. I have some legal questions for you, and I want to start with, can you explain to folks, just so we know that in McGirt, the land was restored, but then a few years later, Oklahoma brings a case Castro Huerta. And can you explain a little bit to folks what that was and what happened in that case?

Rebecca Nagle 25:55

Yeah, so basically, the tribes won. The Supreme Court ruled in McGirt that Muscogee nation still had a reservation. And then subsequently, lower courts in Oklahoma upheld the reservations of all five tribes, like I talked about earlier, and then actually a few other ones in northeastern Oklahoma. And in response to all of that, the state led by our governor, Kevin Stitt through a temper tantrum and decided that they really, really, really, really don't want reservations in Oklahoma. And so they actually went back to the Supreme Court and said, Supreme Court, could you please reverse this decision that you just made? And they asked the Supreme Court to do that over 50 times, which is pretty extreme. The Supreme Court didn't overturn McGuire and didn't actually like agree to hear that question, but in Oklahoma's petitions to the court, they also asked the court to hear this more narrow question of how jurisdiction works on reservations and so states don't have jurisdiction over crimes committed by Native people on reservations, but they also don't have jurisdiction for crimes committed against Native people. So if a native person is the victim of like a murder or an assault or kidnapping, the state doesn't have jurisdiction, and Oklahoma wanted that back. So basically, they're looking at the pie of things that they lost from McGirt, and they wanted a slice of that back. And what they did when they went to the Supreme Court to make the case that the court should do this is they made up a bunch of scary facts and statistics about, you know, criminals walking free, and cases going unprosecuted, and these, like 10s of 1000s of past convictions were getting overturned, and there was this huge, you know, all these cases were just criminals were just not being prosecuted at all, and all these cases were slipping through the tracks. And I, you know, spent a lot of time tracking down those numbers and trying to verify the public claims that the state was making to the Supreme Court, and they were not truthful. And so that was a big part of the reporting, and I get into that in the book. But then, sadly, the Supreme Court still sided with Oklahoma, I think, in an example of how effective disinformation can be, and also sort of the slippery slope that we're at with the highest court about where it gets its facts and its information

Traci Thomas 28:36

can Okay, I was a little bit confused, and I think maybe it's intentionally confusing. But how can both cases be true? Like, how can it work that both things exist at the same time? Yeah,

Rebecca Nagle 28:49

well, I mean, it's, I actually think it's, like, pretty emblematic of federal Indian law. It's this, like, constant, like, push, pull, win, loss, like, and it's, you know, it's full of contradictions. You know, supreme the current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has called it called federal Indian law, schizophrenic. You know, putting the like ableist metaphor aside, I think a good way to understand it, which is something I actually got from speaking with a legal scholar named Maggie Black Hawk is that it's, you know, the totality of our history. And so you have these legal victories from tribes, but then you also have these losses. And so, you know, it's not craziness, but it is sort of like this battlefield of our wins, our losses and the compromises that we've had to make. And so I think this is a great example. And so the way that these two contradictory cases work together is that the central question in McGirt was, does Muskogee nation still have reservation? And the answer to that question is yes. The central question in Castro Huerta was, can the state of Oklahoma prosecute crimes? Are committed by non native people against Native people on a reservation. And I'll say that again slowly, in case you're like, What the fuck? So the question is, can states prosecute crimes committed on tribal land if the perpetrator is non native and the victim is native? And the Supreme Court said yes to that too, but

Traci Thomas 30:24

they cannot prosecute. The state cannot prosecute crimes on tribal land if the perpetrator is native, regardless of the identity of the victim. Yes, got it. That's such bullshit. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy.

Rebecca Nagle 30:40

It goes back to the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court in the late 70s, in a case where actually, like, a drunk guy on a reservation, a drunk white guy got in a fight and assaulted a tribal police officer when he was being arrested, took his case all the way to the Supreme Court to say, hey, the tribe shouldn't be able to prosecute me. And the Supreme Court was like, You know what? You're right. And so tribes don't have jurisdiction over non natives who commit crimes on our land, except for some small exceptions carved out by the Violence Against Women Act. But basically, the federal government has been screwing with how crimes get prosecuted on tribal land since the 1800s and it's a big old mess, and it leads to a lot of violent crime. You know, it makes native people significantly less safe.

Traci Thomas 31:35

How is the case from the 1970s different than Castro Huerta? The

Rebecca Nagle 31:40

question. So that case is called Oliphant, and that case, the question was because, you know, okay, so Castro Huerta is like, Can states prosecute? This question was about wasn't about state jurisdiction. It was about tribal jurisdiction. So it was, what authority do tribal courts have over people who aren't native? And the Supreme Court said none got it. Yeah. So that means, like, you can go to a reservation and you can, like, steal a pack of gum, break the speed limit, murder somebody, steal their horse, and the tribe can't prosecute you. And there have been some exceptions to this, created through the Violence Against Women Act. So for certain crimes centered around domestic violence, child abuse and sexual assault, tribes can prosecute non native people, but they have to jump through these hoops and like, basically get approved by the federal government to be able to exercise that special jurisdiction

Traci Thomas 32:39

hearing you talk about how it's sort of like the history of the relationship between Native Americans and the US government and like that, back and forth, push and pull. It sounds familiar, I think, to anyone listening who's from any marginalized group as well. Like, I mean, I'm black. Like, it just sounds like civil rights, right? Like, it's like Plessy versus Ferguson or whatever, you know, every everything, back and forth, back and forth. And I think in the book, someone refers to Native Americans as legal canaries in the coal mine. Can you kind of explain that to the listeners? Because I found that to be super fascinating. Yeah, yeah. That's a quote from

Rebecca Nagle 33:14

Felix Cohen, who's like an early scholar of federal Indian law. And he talks about how indigenous people are really the canary in the coal mine of our democracy. And, you know, I think it really relates to our present moment, yes, so if you think about, you know, the idea that the United States would colonize Greenland, or the fact that we are shipping undocumented immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, all of these things you know that we can't get gun control because militias and the right to bear arms is, you know, in our founding documents, all of these Things go back to how our democracy since its inception, has treated indigenous peoples, you know, and so often you know, the history of what happened to Native Americans and the legal terrain that that history created is sort of treated like this siloed backwater of American law. But actually it's foundational, and how the US treat has treated indigenous people still governs how we treat people who are living at the margins of our empire, whether it's migrants detained at the border, you know, the victims of US war, the residents of Puerto Rico. And so I think that there are some, you know, if you want to call them, fundamental flaws or problems with our democracy, that because we've never really looked at this part of us, law, we don't even think about it. We pretend like it's not even there. Even legal scholars do this. Legal scholars pretend. And like it's, it's not an important part of our Constitution. I think that there are those fundamental flaws in our democracy are still with us and still haunt us.

Traci Thomas 35:09

Has your thinking around this, either of these cases or this history or anything changed since you've started covering it, or, I guess, and slash or in the most recent weeks of of the newest Trump administration, like, has any of that? Has any of this sort of changed, how you think about the book and the work that you've done?

Rebecca Nagle 35:31

Yeah, um, I think the deeper you get into something, you kind of realize, you realize the extent of things and how far it goes, you know, I think in researching the book, you know, like I knew, I knew that the Trail of Tears was a tragedy. I knew that it was extremely violent. You know, I have known that my whole life, and then reading the primary sources and like, the first hand accounts of it, you're like, Oh, I had no idea it was this bad. And so I felt like, in researching the book, I hit that moment of like, Oh, I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad pretty often. And I think, I think that's a good way to summarize how I felt about the history and how I feel about the present moment. And I think also the potential for what the future might hold is, I think I and for me, it's so it's so rooted in our past. You know, people constantly want to compare Trump to, you know, foreign authoritarian leaders, whether it's Hitler or Putin, but we, we only have to look at ourselves, right? Oh, you know, we should be comparing Trump to Andrew Jackson. We should. We should be looking at our own, our own democracy and the times that it has acted in an authoritarian way towards different groups of people, and think about what, what limits weren't in place to prevent those atrocities from happening and how that's playing out in the present moment.

Traci Thomas 37:06

I think this is such a good point, Rebecca, because part of the reason we compare Trump or any American president to outside bad guys or whatever, instead of our own bad guys is because we don't know American history. We're not taught any of this stuff. Like, I'm 38 years old, and for the most part, I've learned almost, like, more than half of the information in your book felt new to me. And I love history, and I read history books, right? Like, it's not like, I'm not a person who reads and is curious about these things. So people who really aren't, it's like all we know is Hitler, you know, like the only bad guy we've ever heard of, even though there's a myriad of other bad guys in other countries as well that people don't know anything about. I think part of the reason that the analogies are just so like, flat and the same for every everything bad that ever happens is because nobody's teaching, nobody. I mean, not not. This is not a knock on teachers, but the curriculum is not required for people to learn this information. Yeah, I think that's like a huge problem. And I think, of course, by design, right? Like we, they can't be our heroes. And also, you learn the truth about, you know, Thomas Jefferson or Andrew Jack, you know, like, and I feel like Andrew Jackson is probably the president who is agreed upon to be the most villainous one. Yeah,

you know, speaking of things not being in the curriculum, you know, one of the ways that anti indigenous racism functions is through erasure. And so if you just look at like K through 12 education, there's very little in there about Native Americans. There's very little in there about Native Americans. After 1900s it's like we stop existing. Only four states, the last time I checked, were teaching the history of boarding schools, which is when a third of all Native kids were sent to government or church run schools and separated from their families where they experience widespread abuse, and only four states teach that. And so I think that there's this way that that is particular, that is particular to indigenous peoples, yes, where, when we talk about the history of this country, even when we talk about the history of this country with the lens towards racial justice, native people are left out. And the best we get sort of like a passing mention, which isn't helpful in terms of people actually understanding not only what happened to us, but how that influences where our country is at now. And so, yeah. I mean, I think that the the prevailing attitude in the US is just profound ignorance. And I think that we have a lot, we have a we have a lot to make up for. But, and it's not just education, it's the news, it's media, it's pop culture, sort of wherever you look. Yeah, there's very few examples of authentic Native stories being told to a non native audience.

Yeah, I think people who are listening to this episode, who are listeners of the show, will be their brains will be really moving right now, because last week's episode of the show was with Eve Ewing, who is writes about education in America, and her latest book original sins is about The Miseducation of black and indigenous children in the United States. And she talks a ton about these residential schools. She talks about the erasure of Native Americans by design as fundamental to the ability of the United States as a country to thrive, that it's imperative that not only are Native American people removed and killed, but also that we believe that they do not exist. And she talks even about how in so many of the books, Native Americans are only referred to in the past tense, as if they don't exist in the present. So all of these things that you're saying, I know I actually read your book immediately after Eve. So both of these ideas were just like both of your work were in my brain, kind of mixing and mingling, as you were saying the same things or similar things in different ways about different time periods or different people. But all of it is like, so connected. So if you're listening at home and you're like, wait a second, yes, yes, yes, yes, it's all connected. It's all connected. Like the magic should be happening for people who are listening and and I think, I think, you know, to be quite honest, I had never really connected those dots myself. Like I had never thought about how I was taught, again from California, that there weren't, there was no such thing as Native American people anymore, right? Like, that's what we were taught, is like, there was no such thing as a quote, unquote, full blood Native American person. And like, that's a crazy thing to be taught as a child and to believe that a whole group of people just doesn't exist, and to never really have that questioned in your education for your whole life. Like, yeah, that's a real flaw. I mean, I think to me, but I think to me, but I think some people would argue it's a win, depending on whose side you're out on, but a flaw of the education system that, like, we're not. And, like you said, other sources of information, whether it's media or pop culture, that like, that's not even something that was really pushed back against, and it's, you know, extremely fucked up. And I mean, kind of on this line, one of the things you talk about in the book is, like, how the Trail of Tears and what happened to Native American people was a genocide, but we don't use that language to describe it, because it's a little anachronistic, because that word didn't exist at the time. But I'm curious if you also think that too, is by design that we don't use that word for for for other reasons.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if we, when you use the word genocide, this whole, this whole system of, like under international law, of what we're supposed to do with genocide, snaps into place. And so there's a reason that that word is avoided. And, you know, there's, you know, there's a big academic debate of like, is it genocide? Is it ethnic cleansing? Is it elimination? And I think, you know, I think the word genocide is the word that normal people associate with, the kind of, the scale and the systemic nature of the loss of life that we're talking about. Right? We have this story as Americans that while we had some fundamental flaws, our country has gotten better, and we've been a country of progress, and we we started with this amazing idea of, you know, all men being created equal, and in each generation, we've sort of perfected that idea more and more and more well, native people don't fit into that story, right? We don't fit into that story at all because where is our Supreme Court decision ending our legal subordination. Where's our constitutional amendment? You know, the US government today holds over 500 indigenous nations in legal subordination. You know, our resources are exploited. You know, our self governance is limited, our treaties are violated. You know, our lands are exploited, and that's still going on, you know? And so I think that that's where that piece comes in, because, you know, our country has committed genocide, but we've never taken account for it, yes. And instead going back to that erasure, instead of taking account for these atrocities, what we have done as a society is pretend like indigenous people no longer exist, because if the victims of these atrocities aren't around, then we can pretend like nothing is owed for that injustice. Yeah,

I mean, I think you even mentioned in the book about the diseases that were. You know, brought to Native communities by the white settlers. And you talk about how, even the way it's talked about is like, Oh, this happened, like, this thing, like, sort of happened, like people just like, sort of smallpox appeared. And it's like even the things that the settlers did that were, you know, you you can understand how this thing could happen. You could understand how people bringing in their diseases could spread in another community is talked about in a way that it's like, Oh, oops. Like, how did this happen? And I think that also goes along with

like, those things are like it you always take the violence out from it, because, right? So in in our communities in the southeast, a really big way that disease was spread was through the indigenous slave trade, which people don't even know fucking happened. But you know, in the early 1700s a third of the enslaved population in South Carolina was indigenous. And so indigenous, there were raids of indigenous villages to enslave people there in the south, but then a lot of people were also shipped to, like, Caribbean islands, and that was a huge source of the spread of diseases like smallpox. Then you have, I mean, because we actually had as Cherokees, we had quarantine protocols. And so, like, if a village was having a small pox outbreak like, you know, it would kind of go in quarantine and lockdown, and people would even be quarantined like outside of their communities. But then what happened over and over again in these same periods where there are these bad outbreaks of disease is that the colonial militias would have these methods of total war where they would just burn everything to the ground, and you can't practice quarantine when your your communities are being burned to the ground like and so there's this way that the violence and the destabilization that colonialism creates is like is such an important part of the story of why these illnesses spread the way that they did. Because even with smallpox, it's like, like there was a bad smallpox in Boston that killed a lot of people. Because Smallpox is like chicken pox. You're not born immune to smallpox, right? You become immune to smallpox by getting it. And so when it would Ha, when you know there had been 20 or 30 years where there wasn't a smallpox outbreak, and then there was one, a lot of young people would die. And then what you see in indigenous communities is that the same thing happens. Because we've already had a smallpox outbreak. It's like less people die, and it's younger people after some of those initial outbreaks. And the same thing is happening in white communities in, you know, Colonial America at the same time, and so the differences in why so much of why it had such a profound impact on our communities is because it was partnered with extreme violence.

Yeah, can I ask you, I think maybe a stupid question that's gonna feel Elementary to you, but I've always had this question, and I feel like you're here, and I could do it. When someone is a member of a tribal nation or citizen of a tribal nation, they are also a US citizen. Is that true? How does that work for an individual? Yeah, well,

Rebecca Nagle 48:19

it's funny, because it's actually coming up right now in the whole birthright citizenship thing. Yeah, so we are not part of the 14th Amendment. Native Americans were left out, and we did not become US citizens until 1924 and so the Trump administration is actually using that argument to say, like, hey, like, look, there are these people who are born in the you, you know, within the boundaries of the US who weren't US citizens after the 14th Amendment, to try to challenge the constitutional right to birth Right citizenship. So anyways, backing up, yeah. I mean, so I am. I think the easiest analogy is that, like, I am a citizen of the United States, and so certain laws apply to me. I'm also a resident of Oklahoma. And so certain laws apply to me because I live in Oklahoma, and then I'm a citizen of Cherokee Nation. And so certain laws apply to me because I'm a citizen of Cherokee Nation, and so for me, it's just another level of government in my life. I mean, what that looks like on a very practical level, you know, like my car tag is through my tribe. I get my health care through my tribe. You know, if I committed a crime on my reservation, my tribe would be the government that prosecutes me. I can call my tribe if I need to call the police, or, you know, if I have, you know, a problem with my house or something like that. But you know, the utility company is like the public utility company. Town where I live, you know, I still pay taxes, you know, all of those things and so, I mean, I think it's just and I think that tribes are a layer of government for everyone, you know, like everyone who lives within my tribe's reservation benefits from the roads that my tribes pays the money that it gives to public schools, like all of the public infrastructure, you know, the the police and the fire services and the ambulances, like they, they help non native citizens too, you know, but, yeah, so, but for a period of time, so we're, we just celebrated 100 years of the Citizenship Act and native people being being US citizens, and prior to that, we weren't because we were citizens of our indigenous nations.

Traci Thomas 50:48

Okay, thank you for that. I just have a few more questions for you. One is we talked about your breaks that you take. But how do you like to write how many hours a day? How often do you listen to music? Are you in your home? Are there snacks and beverages rituals. Tell us about it. Yeah,

Rebecca Nagle 51:03

yeah. I mean, it's pretty like, people are gonna think I'm like, a serial killer when I describe this, but I'm, like, pretty hardcore. So I write in the morning. It's like, the best time. And I generally would write from like nine to three, or like eight to three. Okay, when I'm like, drafting, I like, try to write, like, 1000 words a day. And then when I'm editing, I have, like, I like, especially when I was, like, up against the deadline with the book, I would have like, pretty specific, like, week, like, what I was trying to get done each week, if not what I was trying to get done each day. And so I would kind of like write out, like, you know, whatever edit I was doing. I would like write out what needed to be done with each chapter, and then like, break it up. So if I was, like, line editing, or if I was doing structural edits, and I would also say that my writing looks a lot more like editing than writing like the amount of time that I spend writing on the blank page is maybe like 10% of the amount of time I spend writing because I just try to get it down, and then I edit and edit and edit and edit and edit and edit. Okay, yeah. What

Traci Thomas 52:13

about snacks and beverages? Lots

Rebecca Nagle 52:15

of snacks, water, no music in my house, in my office, I do best when it's quiet, sometimes, sometimes music, but usually it's like a song on repeat.

Traci Thomas 52:28

I don't want to be too weird, but I actually need to know what snacks specifically. Oh, we're a very snack forward podcast here, and when someone says lots of snacks, my whole heart leaps out of my chest, because some people are weird and, like, I don't eat anything. So, oh, my god, yeah, I got a snacker. I need to know,

Rebecca Nagle 52:46

um, I mean, it depends. I'm like, a real, like, protein snack girl. So, like, yogurt nuts, um, like, I have these, like, little chicken sausages and chicken nuggets that I can heat up in the air fryer. Oh, um, cheese crackers. Um, yeah, but I generally, like, have breakfast and then, like, a morning snack, and then lunch, and then an afternoon snack, or afternoon snacks, okay, and dinner. And now you're talking before I go to bed, so I eat all day.

Traci Thomas 53:19

You are officially in Episode I was

Rebecca Nagle 53:21

when I was at McDowell, which was one of the writing residencies I gotta do. I would like, come for breakfast, and there would be like, you could, like, order on the sheet. You could, like, put it was like, kind of this grid, and you could write down, like, how many pieces of bacon you would want to put, like, eight. Just like, leave with my plate of bacon.

Traci Thomas 53:43

I love that. What's a word you can never spell correctly on the first try?

Rebecca Nagle 53:47

Oh, crap. You know, this is really embarrassing, but a word that I can spell it correctly, but I have to, like, think about it, so it's two words that are really embarrassing. One is indigenous. I always am like, where's the E, where's the E. I always want to put the E, where the I goes, not the first I, but the second I. I want it to be an E, and then I flip that. And then sovereignty. I'm like, That sovereign, like, how

Traci Thomas 54:13

that's a hard one, yeah? Actually, both really hard. So I respect this, yeah,

Rebecca Nagle 54:18

but it's like, for the one berries do, it's sort of like, what I do that I I struggle to spell those words. This is

Traci Thomas 54:25

a very, I'm a very bad speller. So this is a very pro bad spelling podcast. Like, anytime someone comes on and they're like, I won the spelling bee in third grade, I'm like, You know what? We're not gonna air this episode. Like, I don't like this person. They're my enemy. I just have, I guess, two more questions for you. One is that for people who love by the fire we carry, what are some other books you might recommend to them that are in conversation with your work?

Rebecca Nagle 54:49

Ooh, that's a good question. Yeah, some of the books that like I really leaned on a lot in writing my book. Ta. Ties that bind by Taya miles, I've been here all the while by Elena Roberts and instill the waters run by Angie debo. So those are all like history books, but they informed my writing and my book a lot. I

Traci Thomas 55:20

just want to quickly say, for people who read and loved killers of the flower moon, you should read this book and it recommended instead. I just want to casually just throw that out there. If you could have one person dead or alive, read by the fire we carry, who would you want it to be? This is your last one. Man.

Rebecca Nagle 55:41

Oh, that's really hard. I mean, guess my ancestors, I would like to hear what they think, Yeah, John and Major Ridge,

Traci Thomas 55:48

yeah. Okay. Well, everybody by the fire we carry is out in the world. You can get it now, I sort of buried the lead on this, but congratulations on the women's non fiction prize. I saw that you made that long list, which is awesome. I mean, you've been on a bunch of lists. You've been like a favorite book from 2024 from a bunch of publications, the National Book Critics, circle list too, right? Yeah, the finalist for the finalists for that. Yeah. So, you know, Rebecca out here doing great things, and we should all be reading this book. And you can get it wherever you get it. And she reads the audio book, which I listened to, but the physical book has pictures and maps, so you might have to get both. I don't know. Sorry, tough for you, but Rebecca, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me and everyone else. We will see you in the stacks.

All right, y'all that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening and thank you again to Rebecca Nagel for joining the show. Don't forget the stacks book club pick for February is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Ira Madison, the third will be back to discuss the book with us on Wednesday, February 26 if you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks andjoin the stacks pack and check out my substack at tracithomas.substack.com. Make sure you're subscribed to the stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, please, please, please leave us a rating and a review for more from the stacks. Follow us on social media @thestackspod on Instagram, threads and Tiktok, and @thestackspod_ on Twitter, and you can check out our website at thestackspodcast.com. This episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Megan Caballero. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight, and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Megan Caballero
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Ep. 358 The Purpose of Schools with Eve L. Ewing