Spitting on Andrew Jackson's grave with Rebecca Nagle

Journalist Rebecca Nagle poses next to her new book, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

Photo credit: Brittany Bendabout

That's how Nagle begins her new book and how she frames the version of history she's telling. The book digs into the past and future of Native sovereignty through the lens of one of the most significant Supreme Court rulings for Native Americans in over 100 years.

Transcript

B A PARKER, HOST:

Hey, everyone. You're listening to CODE SWITCH. I'm B.A. Parker.

GENE DEMBY, HOST:

And I'm Gene Demby.

PARKER: All right. Gene, I've been thinking about how some leaders are revered, you know, even when their policies are particularly violent and heinous.

DEMBY: I mean, you got to narrow that down to a few hundred people, but are you thinking about anybody in particular?

PARKER: Fair. Former President Andrew Jackson comes to mind.

DEMBY: OK, yeah.

PARKER: He's the man on the $20 bill. He's been celebrated as the - super air quotes here - "common man president."

DEMBY: Yeah. I distinctly remember after Trump was elected in 2016 that he very proudly hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson behind him in the Oval Office, which was a choice.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: I brought the Andrew Jackson portrait there.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: Right behind me. Right - boom - over my left shoulder.

PARKER: It's definitely a choice. But then again, Trump says that his election was the most similar to Jackson's and lists him as a personal hero. But Jackson was, you know, a brutal slave owner who at the time of his death owned 150 people on his Tennessee cotton plantation, where he's now buried.

DEMBY: And Jackson is probably most infamous for seizing land and extending slavery to the west, like, at the expense of Native American homelands and, obviously, Native American lives.

PARKER: Yeah, he's the president responsible for the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears and the death of over 10,000 Indigenous people from that forced relocation.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DEMBY: Yeah, there's a lot of space between, you know, the American history version of the president that we get and then the history told by the people whose, you know, families were on the bloody business end of all the policies that he put in place.

PARKER: Exactly. And when I spoke to Rebecca Nagle, a Native journalist, about her new book, that impact is still very prevalent.

REBECCA NAGLE: (Non-English language spoken). Hi, my name is Rebecca Nagle. I live in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

PARKER: So you have this new book called "By The Fire We Carry." And as, like, a personal side note, I enjoy any book that starts off with someone spitting on the grave of President Andrew Jackson. I just feel like that's a great...

NAGLE: (Laughter).

PARKER: That's a great establisher of where you're headed with the book while you're reading it.

NAGLE: Yeah. Yeah, a good primer.

(LAUGHTER)

NAGLE: What version of history we're going to tell here.

PARKER: Very much so. Today, in some political circles, we're still seeing President Jackson and his legacy praised.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TRUMP: We are the country of Andrew Jackson, of the very great Andrew Jackson.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: Andrew Jackson, we thank you for your service.

PARKER: Former President Donald Trump has championed President Jackson. What do you make of that?

NAGLE: Yeah, I mean, you know, the comparison has been drawn, but I think there's actually a lot of parallels between Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

TRUMP: Well, they say that his campaign and his whole thing was most like mine.

Trump and Jackson, Jackson and Trump.

NAGLE: So Andrew Jackson won in 1828 after he had controversially and narrowly lost the presidency to John Quincy Adams in 1824. And he actually campaigned in 1828 on the message that the 1824 election had been stolen. In a lot of circles, he's considered our sort of first populous president and sort of had a very populous style of politics. He lined his cabinet with cronies and friends. There was also a lot of turnover in his administration. He would use positions of power to enrich himself, including, like, Indigenous land and the ways that Indigenous land seizures actually benefited him personally. And, which the book goes into, he at one point defied a Supreme Court decision.

PARKER: Huh?

NAGLE: Andrew Jackson broke with the Supreme Court and the Constitution and ignored what the Supreme Court said was the law, and it was a constitutional crisis. And so I think, you know, we hear a lot of talk that our democracy is at an inflection point. You know, I hear the word unprecedented thrown around a lot. But I think that there's so much in our present political moment that is a deep, deep part of the DNA of this country. And there's so much that has been with us all along...

PARKER: Yeah.

NAGLE: ...That I think we would be well-served by knowing that history a little bit better.

PARKER: You're like, this is very much precedented. You would like this to be unprecedented, but I can show you the receipts.

NAGLE: Yeah, exactly. And I feel like, too, like, when people talk about authoritarianism and Trump, they're always kind of comparing Trump to authoritarian leaders abroad. It's like, we don't have to leave our country and leave our country's history to find the examples of what we don't want to have happen again. And actually, I think we would be much better served looking inward instead of looking outward to try and figure out how this political moment has happened.

PARKER: So this week on CODE SWITCH, I talked to Rebecca Nagle about the implications of recent Supreme Court cases that actually followed the law in Indigenous people's favor and the conservative pushback because of it.

I mean, we've all heard about the Trail of Tears in some capacity. But your book is such a deep history of how it's played out for Indigenous people, and it is also, like, a history that you would hope would be more well-known because it is...

NAGLE: Yeah.

PARKER: ...Such an ingrained part of just, like, the foundation of America.

NAGLE: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think people have a really vague sense of what the Trail of Tears was, you know, that people walked a long way and that a lot of them died. But I don't think we have a sense of the politics of that time, how the policy came about, and really the extreme violence of how the U.S. government carried out that policy.

PARKER: Yeah. I mean, sadly, I think, the - like, the true extent of my adult knowledge of Andrew Jackson was - before "Hamilton," there was a Broadway musical called "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson." And it was just Andrew Jackson in - he was a rocker in leather pants.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ROCK STAR")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, singing) Ladies and gentlemen, Governor Andrew Jackson. Yeah.

PARKER: And that was how the story of his treatment of Indigenous people was being sold, as a rock musical...

NAGLE: Yeah.

PARKER: ...Which - all right. Can you talk a bit about the impact Andrew Jackson and his policies had on your tribe?

NAGLE: Yeah. So - and it wasn't just Andrew Jackson. You know, like so many chapters in U.S. history, he didn't work alone. But by the 1830s, Southern states had decided that they wanted to get rid of Indigenous nations who were living within their borders. And so they met, and they came up with a plan. And they decided that if Indigenous nations wouldn't agree to move on their own, they would basically terrorize those Indigenous nations until they had no choice. This was illegal because those states didn't really have the right to invade Cherokee Nation, to arrest Cherokee citizens. You know, their law was unenforceable on Cherokee land.

And so Cherokees - they lobbied President Jackson to do something about it 'cause it was his constitutional obligation, and he refused. The issue then went to Congress, and Congress passed a law called the Indian Removal Act. Barely - barely passed a law, but it got through. And that law set in motion the expulsion of 80,000 Indigenous people from basically what were then the boundaries of the United States, so it was this policy of clear ethnic cleansing. But Cherokee Nation continued to fight the policy, and actually won this really important Supreme Court decision, Worcester v. Georgia. The Supreme Court said Cherokee Nation is a sovereign government, sovereign nation, that has rights, and Georgia can't invade it and violate those rights. Georgia's law is unenforceable in Cherokee Nation.

And Andrew Jackson said, the Supreme Court has made its decision. It can enforce it. And so Jackson refused to comply with the Supreme Court. And so what followed was not just the expulsion of Cherokee Nation, but many tribes at that time living within the boundaries of the United States. And one of the things I was really surprised by in the primary sources were how big the activist movement was to try and defeat the Indian Removal Act, and the really intense terms with which the activists talked about it. And one of the newspaper op-eds that I read was somebody talking about how this policy would fix a stain on the history of the United States that could never be washed away.

And they really thought - 'cause this is, like, when the U.S. is still kind of young, and there's sort of this open question about how much this democracy will succeed, or will it fail? And people really talked about this policy of ethnic cleansing of Indigenous people being a threat to the fabric of our democracy in the 1830s. And so I think it's this really important chapter that has shaped our country that, unfortunately, we just have this collective amnesia about that, you know, we could learn a lot from.

PARKER: Yeah. I mean, this is also just, like, an ignorance of the Trail of Tears - that there was a divide. There were people who said, let's sign the treaty. Let's leave. And then there were people who wanted to stay and fight.

NAGLE: Yeah. And so my family - you know, they had spent decades opposing any kind of agreement where Cherokee would leave their homelands. And then after Andrew Jackson defied that Supreme Court decision, they decided, well, there's really not much else that we can do. And so they started advocating for Cherokee Nation to sign a removal treaty. In their eyes, it was the only way that Cherokees, as a people and a nation, would survive. And they spent years trying to convince their fellow countrymen to join them, and they failed. And so eventually, what they did is, against the will and the government of the Cherokee people, they illegally signed the Treaty of New Echota. And for that decision, they were all killed.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

NAGLE: So the Treaty of New Echota - my great-great-great-grandfather and his dad and a few other family members signed it. And basically, you know, it exchanged our homeland in the Southeast in exchange for land west of the Mississippi and some compensation. It was signed by a minority of Cherokee leaders who weren't authorized by the Cherokee people to enter into that agreement. The Cherokee people protested. There were petitions. There was one petition that was signed by nearly every Cherokee man, woman and child.

But the government decided that it would still enforce the treaty. And so in May of 1838, the government rounded Cherokees up at gunpoint and herded the population into 25 open-air stockades. And so in basically a month, 7,000 soldiers and militiamen rounded up 15,000 people and put them into concentration camps. The camps didn't really have any sanitation or shelter, and people died in really large numbers. And so within four months, about 2,000 people had died. And then people walked west, all the way to what is now Oklahoma. And in total - the true number is not known, but one missionary estimated that in total, between the camps and removal, 4,000 people died. And people blamed the Ridges. They blamed my family. They blamed the treaty. And so not long after the survivors of the Trail of Tears arrived in Cherokee Nation's new land, my family - they were assassinated.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PARKER: In the book, you very, I mean, pragmatically come to terms with your family's role in signing the treaty.

NAGLE: Yeah. I mean, you know, I think, in the research and doing everything, I sort of landed on a place where I think that they made the wrong decision for the right reason, if that makes sense.

PARKER: Yeah.

NAGLE: I think that they truly were trying to make sure that Cherokee Nation would survive. You know, I think what they saw that the tribe was facing was extermination and genocide. And they thought moving was the only way that Cherokee Nation, as a people and as a tribe, would survive. But I think it was still wrong because it was undemocratic. It was illegal. And, you know, how Cherokees should survive this time, no matter how desperate the situation was, really should have been up to the Cherokee people. So yeah. I mean, I think - I will say, the one thing that I really respect about the sacrifice that my ancestors made - or what I, like, spend a lot of time thinking about - is, you know, I think we live in a culture where we care a lot about what other people think. I mean, I care about what people think. I'm not...

PARKER: Yeah.

NAGLE: ...Going to sit here and pretend like I don't, you know? And I just can't imagine dying for your nation knowing that you would not be remembered as a hero, but as a traitor...

PARKER: Yeah.

NAGLE: ...And knowing that you would not be remembered for your sacrifice, but for your treason. And I think about that, and I think, I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if I would be that strong.

PARKER: I mean, ultimately, I think, in the book, you say that the thing that these men wanted ultimately happened but in spite of the thing that they did.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

NAGLE: Yeah. Yeah, which is - I mean, I think what they truly cared about came true, which is that Cherokees, as a people and a nation, are still here.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PARKER: Coming up, we dig into one of the most significant rulings for Native Americans in over 100 years.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PARKER: OK. Rebecca?

NAGLE: Yeah.

PARKER: This is when I need, like, Professor Rebecca Nagle to break it down for me.

(LAUGHTER)

NAGLE: I know. It's so complicated. It is so complicated.

PARKER: Stay with us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PARKER: Parker, CODE SWITCH.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PARKER: We're back talking with Native journalist Rebecca Nagle about her new book "By The Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight For Justice On Native Land." The book goes back and forth between the history of Native displacement in the United States and a recent Supreme Court decision that rectifies some of the sins of that displacement.

So in 2020, there was a Supreme Court case, McGirt v. Oklahoma, that many people understand as one of the most significant rulings for Native Americans in over 100 years. It's a case that was ostensibly about whether the state of Oklahoma has jurisdiction to prosecute crimes on reservation land. Can you tell me about how the decision came down in that case?

NAGLE: Yeah. So I'd actually like to share a couple sentences from Neil Gorsuch's decision.

PARKER: Sure, please.

NAGLE: He wrote - (reading) on the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral homelands in Georgia and Alabama, Creek Nation was given assurances their new lands in the west would be secure forever. Today, we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for the purposes of federal criminal law. Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.

I - when I read that, I sobbed, and I think a lot of people had the same reaction. And I think people were overwhelmed with the joy that Muscogee Nation won.

PARKER: Yeah.

NAGLE: But it was a joy that also cut hard and deep because our bones and our blood knew how much had been sacrificed to achieve this one act of justice.

PARKER: And the joy that people were feeling was because this case wasn't just about criminal jurisdiction, it was also about land and whether or not a 19th century treaty that granted the Muscogee Creek Nation a reservation in Oklahoma was still in effect.

NAGLE: Yeah. So, in legal terms, what the decision did was follow the Solem test, which is - it's named after a Supreme Court decision that kind of governs whether or not a tribe still has a reservation. And the long and the short of it is, you know, did Congress get rid of the reservation? And if Congress hasn't, it's still there. And so, legally, it was actually not that complicated of a decision, and I think that's what's ironic about the historic status of McGirt because the Supreme Court, you know, didn't overturn anything or strike anything down. All they did was follow the law. But still that was radical because what so often happens to tribes is when our legal rights, what is written in the law, comes up against the interest of a state or a bunch of non-Native people, we still lose. And this time, you know, the Supreme Court held that line.

PARKER: So the ruling in McGirt gave back this huge reservation that I think in the book you describe as 3 million acres?

NAGLE: Yeah. Yeah, so the Muscogee reservation is 3 million acres in, kind of, eastern central Oklahoma, so - and it's about the size of Connecticut.

PARKER: That's massive.

NAGLE: Yeah.

PARKER: So how did that go down with Oklahomans?

NAGLE: Yeah, that's a good question.

(LAUGHTER)

NAGLE: Well, and to back up a minute, so the Supreme Court decision on July 9, 2020, just applied to the Muscogee reservation. But then there are other tribes in Oklahoma, my tribe, Cherokee Nation, also the Chickasaw, Choctaws and Seminoles, that share a really similar history, not the same but a similar history to Muscogee Nation. And so there was this widespread belief that whatever the court held for Muscogee Nation would hold for our tribes, too, and that indeed came true. And so lower courts in Oklahoma applied the McGirt decision to our reservations. And so if you take all five tribes' reservations together, it is 19 million acres, about half the land in Oklahoma, most of the city of Tulsa. It is an area that is larger than West Virginia and nine other U.S. states.

PARKER: Rebecca...

NAGLE: And together, all that land is the largest restoration of tribal land in U.S. history.

PARKER: So what does that mean in practice?

NAGLE: Yeah, I mean, so the biggest thing that shifted is who prosecutes what crimes. So Oklahoma lost jurisdiction to prosecute crimes if the person who committed the crime was Native and for a period of time, although it then changed thanks to the Supreme Court, if the victim was Native, even if the perpetrator was non-Native. And so that jurisdiction shifted to either the feds or the tribes, and that was, like, the most concrete thing. You know, Oklahoma also lost jurisdiction to regulate, like, coal mining, but most other civil jurisdiction didn't really shift. So it's really just this big shift in who prosecutes what crimes. But to go back to your earlier question, Oklahoma's response was to basically throw a temper tantrum. The governor really, really, really, really hates the decision and is very upset.

(SOUNDBITE OF OKLAHOMA STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS)

KEVIN STITT: Today, our state is dealing with the fallout from the McGirt decision. It's a decision that has rocked our state and caused division, where previously there was none.

PARKER: This is Oklahoma's Governor Kevin Stitt, right?

NAGLE: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)

STITT: I do not believe that Oklahoma wants eastern Oklahoma to be turned into a reservation.

NAGLE: He's just kind of anti-Native. Like, our state legislature passed a bill that protects Native students who want to wear regalia at their graduation or wear, like, an eagle feather on their cap - 'cause, like, some schools, like, want everyone for graduation to dress the same, I guess. And that man vetoed it, like, that bill that's just about Native students wearing regalia. And so, I mean, everything, every little thing, whether it's, like, a hunting and fishing agreement or our tribes operating a state welcome center, just became adversarial. And then that was happening before the McGirt decision came down.

PARKER: Isn't he of Native descent?

NAGLE: Well, that's complicated. So he is technically a citizen of our tribe, but there is a strong argument that his ancestors became citizens of Cherokee Nation by fraud and basically bribed some people and got on the rolls because they thought it would help them get free land. And so here we are (laughter).

PARKER: So here we are, and after the McGirt decision came down, I believe you wrote that Governor Stitt and the attorney general of Oklahoma asked SCOTUS for McGirt to be reversed at least 50 times.

NAGLE: Yeah. Yeah. So they - what had happened was Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and Amy Coney Barrett took her place on the bench. And they thought with that change, they could take the case back to the Supreme Court and get a different outcome, which is pretty bananas 'cause the Supreme Court isn't supposed to change its mind on issues every few years. Like, it's supposed to be one of those, like, constant things. It's not like Congress, where it changes with the tides of politics.

So the Supreme Court said, OK, Oklahoma, we're not going to overturn the decision, but they gave Oklahoma basically a slice of what it wanted, which was a piece of that criminal jurisdiction back, specifically jurisdiction over crimes where the perpetrator is non-Native, but the victim is Native. And not just Oklahoma - the way they wrote their opinion is now all states, all 50 states in the U.S., can prosecute those crimes. And so they basically gave states more power on reservations, which, on the whole, has not worked out well for Native people and has not worked out well for Native victims of crime.

PARKER: Does this make the McGirt decision feel bittersweet?

NAGLE: I think what makes me sad is that I think the McGirt decision is a generational moment for our tribes to build a better future. And instead of thinking about, OK, we have our reservations back, you know, what does that mean for the Muscogee language? Or what does that mean for our culture and our life-wise? How else can we assert our sovereignty now that we have a recognized reservation again? Tribes have had to be in this defensive posture and spending a lot of time and resources and money instead of in that future thinking way of just defending the decision. And so far, you know, the McGirt decision is still there. Oklahoma has been able to chip away at a little piece of it, but they haven't been able to get rid of it. But I think that space to really build on the decision is what we've been robbed because of Oklahoma's backlash.

PARKER: You mentioned that this revision hasn't worked out well for Native victims of crime. Tell me more about that.

NAGLE: Yeah. I mean, that decision was called Castro-Huerta, and we don't have great data on Castro-Huerta yet.

PARKER: Yeah.

NAGLE: But what we do have is data from states where states, tribes and feds already share jurisdiction on reservations. So Oklahoma wasn't one of those states, but there are places like California where states actually can prosecute crimes that happen on reservations. And this was part of Oklahoma's argument of, like, well, more people having jurisdiction is better 'cause then more people can prosecute crimes, and a lot of times these crimes go unprosecuted, especially against, you know, Native victims. And so this will make reservations safer.

And there's a ton of data that actually the opposite happens, where everyone just passes the book, you know? Native communities don't get a lot of investment. They're not a priority for law enforcement. They're not a priority for the FBI. And so everybody looks around and says, oh, well, the feds can pick that up. Oh, the state can prosecute that. And so they disinvest. And so there's actually been a bunch of studies of these states where there's that shared jurisdiction, communities feel less safe and also get, like, less public safety, real dollars. And that's what's kind of frustrating about the Supreme Court decision is, like, we've tried this. We already know that this doesn't work. But they, you know, made that decision anyways.

PARKER: In reading this book, I think the biggest thing that you opened my eyes to is that so much of being in America is propping up individualism.

NAGLE: Yeah.

PARKER: And so when you take that individualist approach and try to understand something like tribal sovereignty, which implies that you're part of a collective, for a lot of people in this country that concept feels foreign.

NAGLE: Yeah. Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

PARKER: Yeah. Like, at the heart of this is, you know, the sense of entitlement like, what's in it for me? - without thinking about how things could benefit everyone, or benefit...

NAGLE: Yeah.

PARKER: ...The collective.

NAGLE: Yeah. I mean, I think it's - I think the framework in which we fight for individual rights in this country doesn't neatly apply to tribes because our rights or our treaty rights or our land rights, they're held collectively by the indigenous nation, not by the individual. And I think even, like, in progressive circles and on the left, I think we've been really failed in a lot of ways because people don't understand that, you know, and they don't think about fighting for a marginalized group in that way. I think a lot of people don't really understand what a federally recognized tribe is or how treaties fit into our constitution or how tribal governments function. And so I think all of that lack of understanding really hinders our ability to assert that sovereignty and assert those rights because people don't understand how it's a part of U.S. law and really the fabric of our society.

And those things, they're all connected. Like, when we have lost land, we have also had huge detrimental impacts on our language and our culture. And so all those things for indigenous nations, whether it's the health and wellbeing of our citizens, the health and wellbeing of our land, our culture, our language, our laws, our sovereignty, you can't tease it all out. You know, for us, they kind of are in this big bundle together, and usually when you threaten one, the others are threatened too. And that's why a decision like McGirt is so important because it's not just about real estate or who's prosecuting who for what crime. But it's really about laying down that foundation and that legacy for the future generations, for all those things that make a person Muscogee or make a person Cherokee, for those things to be able to continue.

PARKER: I mean, ultimately, this is a story of - that you - I think you say it better - like, you can't give back something that you already own.

NAGLE: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what a lot of people would say. You know, oh, the reservation was given back to the tribe. But what happened legally is that it had always belonged to Muscogee Nation, and Oklahoma had just been gaslighting tribes for a century and saying, no, no, no, you don't have a reservation, you don't have a reservation, even though it was completely illegal. And so, like you said, exactly, you can't give back what already belongs to someone.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PARKER: And that's our show. You can follow us on Instagram @nprcodeswitch. If email is more your thing, ours is [email protected]. And subscribe to the podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also subscribe to the CODE SWITCH newsletter by going to npr.org/codeswitchnewsletter. And if you haven't had the chance to listen, we dropped the last in our limited Ask CODE SWITCH series last week, so check it out.

DEMBY: And just a reminder that signing up for CODE SWITCH+ is a great way to support our show and public media, and you get to listen to every single one of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org/codeswitch.

PARKER: This episode was produced by Christina Cala. It was edited by Courtney Stein. Our engineer was Josephine Nyounai.

DEMBY: And we would be remiss if we did not shout out the rest of the CODE SWITCH massive. That's Xavier Lopez, Jess Kung, Leah Donnella, Dalia Mortada, Veralyn Williams, Jasmine Romero and Lori Lizarraga.

PARKER: I'm B.A. Parker.

DEMBY: I'm Gene Demby.

PARKER: Hydrate.

DEMBY: Be easy, y'all. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.