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After One Hundred Winters
Out October 19, 2021

After One Hundred Winters

Synopsis

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.

Praise for After One Hundred Winters

Prizewinning historian Margaret Jacobs offers a clear-eyed and heartrending look at the fraught historical relationship between Indigenous people and newcomers that highlights Indigenous survivors and descendants while calling to account all of us who have benefitted from Indigenous land. After One Hundred Winters is a necessary book for this moment.

TIYA MILES, AUTHOR OF ALL THAT SHE CARRIED: THE JOURNEY OF ASHLEY’S SACK, A BLACK FAMILY KEEPSAKE

“When the Ponca people were forcibly removed from their homelands more than a century ago, they carried their seeds with them. In this compassionate and honest reckoning, Margaret Jacobs confronts a long history of settler theft and violence against Indigenous people, and reveals how settler accountability and efforts at collective action can restore fractured relationships. After One Hundred Winters is a moving, vital story of how those very seeds made their way back, in Ponca hands, to their homelands to take root again. May this book be a seed of its own."

BETH PIATOTE, AUTHOR OF THE BEADWORKERS: STORIES
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