In her book, Jacobs 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. The book also 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.
Margaret D. Jacobs is 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.” Visit reconciliationrising.org.
Jimmy Sweet (Lakota/Dakota), assistant professor at Rutgers University, specializes in Native American and Indigenous studies with a concentration on interactions between American Indians and Euro-Americans. His current book project, “The ‘Mixed-Blood’ Moment: Race, Law, and Mixed-Ancestry Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest,” analyzes the legal and racial complexities of American Indians of mixed Indian and European ancestry with a focus on kinship, family history, land dispossession, and citizenship. Sweet is dedicated to Indigenous language revitalization and preservation. His research is driven by a need to understand the full effects of American colonialism on Indigenous Americans and how those consequences influence Native people today, doing so with the hope of contributing to the continued fight for Indigenous sovereignty and the healing of Indigenous communities.
This event was recorded on November 10, 2021.