After One Hundred Winters - by Margaret D Jacobs

Book Synopsis

A necessary reckoning with America's troubled history of injustice to Indigenous people

After One Hundred Winters confronts the harsh truth that the United States was founded on the violent dispossession of Indigenous people and asks what reconciliation might mean in light of this haunted history. In this timely and urgent book, settler historian Margaret Jacobs tells the stories of the individuals and communities who are working together to heal historical wounds--and reveals how much we have to gain by learning from our history instead of denying it.

Jacobs traces the brutal legacy of systemic racial injustice to Indigenous people that has endured since the nation's founding. Explaining how early attempts at reconciliation succeeded only in robbing tribal nations of their land and forcing their children into abusive boarding schools, she shows that true reconciliation must emerge through Indigenous leadership and sustained relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people that are rooted in specific places and histories. In the absence of an official apology and a federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission, ordinary people are creating a movement for transformative reconciliation that puts Indigenous land rights, sovereignty, and values at the forefront. With historical sensitivity and an eye to the future, Jacobs urges us to face our past and learn from it, and once we have done so, to redress past abuses.

Drawing on dozens of interviews, After One Hundred Winters reveals how Indigenous people and settlers in America today, despite their troubled history, are finding unexpected gifts in reconciliation.

Review Quotes

"After One Hundred Winters offer benchmark conversations enriching to western literature with accurate depictions of tribal cultures and diversity in the American West."---Meredith Eliassen, Western American Literature

"

The book recounts massacres and broken treaties, and pays particular attention to the Friends of the Indian movement, white activists whose misguided assimilationist enterprises further eroded Indigenous nations. Jacobs, who is not herself Indigenous, emphasizes the importance of centering Native Americans' own understanding of this history. She also highlights people of settler descent who have amplified Native voices and pushed for justice--not to portray them as heroes but to illuminate a potential path toward reconciliation.

"-- "The New Yorker"

"Shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award in Nonfiction"

"Winner of the Cover & Design Award, The Nebraska Center for the Book"

About the Author

Margaret D. Jacobs is the Charles Mach Professor of History and director of the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her books include White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940. Website reconciliationrising.org