New Books in the American West · New Books Network

Rebecca Nagle, "By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land" (Harper, 2024)

September 16, 2025·39 min·3 clips

Rebecca Nagle felt a visceral sense of justice when she learned the McGirt case could recognize Cherokee land after over a century.

A rural map starts doing legal work. The guest follows a death row case as it moves from the state public defender to the federal public defender, where Lisa McCalmont starts checking what earlier lawyers missed. At first, it sounds procedural. Then a tribal police officer with the Muskogee Creek Light Horse corrects the location of the crime, and the whole case tilts. Okmulgee is not background here. The drive past the state's claimed spot toward a memorial cross for George Jacobs turns geography into evidence. Once the defense team spots the mismatch, the question is no longer just guilt or sentence. It is who had the authority to prosecute. The guest makes that plain with a simple comparison: a prosecutor in Philadelphia cannot prosecute a crime committed in New York. On a reservation, she explains, a crime committed by someone who is Native American does not automatically fall under state jurisdiction. That is where the book's approach comes through. It stays close to one road, one map, and one cross, then lets those details pull the listener into Native land and contested authority. The ending reaches back into history without getting grandiose. The guest argues that leaving this story out writes Native people out of the American story and leaves the country foggy about its own origins. The host, speaking as an undergraduate teacher, recognizes the classroom problem: many students simply have not been taught this history. The conversation stays measured, which suits it. The legal twist is not trivia. It is the route into buried history.

As heard by us

A careful interview that uses a murder case to open up Native jurisdiction and the omissions in American history.

Rebecca Nagle's conversation on New Books in the American West treats By the Fire We Carry as both a murder case and a plain-spoken look at Native land, jurisdiction, and the gaps left by American history.

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Why you'd press play

For an in-depth look at Native land, jurisdiction, and the murder case that raised the questions.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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