Registration opens:
October 13th, 2026 at 9:00am

Tuesday Night Book Club

"By the Fire We Carry" by Rebecca Nagle

Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma.

This meeting will be held IN PERSON and ON ZOOM. Those unable to attend in person, can join us via Zoom simultaneously.

Join us to discuss By the Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagle:

Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests—in the emergence of this great nation, our government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples.

In the 1830s, Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn’t have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle’s own Cherokee Nation.

In order to participate, please click one of the REGISTER buttons. 

If you have any questions, please email: tuesdaybookclub@westlakelibrary.org

This book club meets every second Tuesday of the month at 7 p.m. View and print the list of books and check out our Book Discussion page for more book and movie clubs!

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