Rebecca Clarren – “The Cost of Free Land”

Rebecca Clarren is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the American West for more than twenty years. Her most recent book is titled The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance. The book is a powerful, nuanced, and deeply personal exploration of her ancestors fleeing antisemitism in Russia and immigrating to the South Dakota prairie at the turn of the 20th century. I was lucky enough to receive an advanced copy of the book, and I absolutely loved it. Rebecca seamlessly weaves together heavily researched US and Native American history with a vulnerable, clear-eyed examination of her family’s legacy. The result is an engaging story that not only helped me better understand the past, but provided a blueprint for how we can begin to make amends and move forward, both individually and as a nation.

In The Cost of Free Land, Rebecca grapples with the complicated ripple effects of her family settling on the Great Plains– the free land that they received from the US government allowed them to establish a foothold in America, and over time, they found relative stability, especially when compared to their chaotic lives in Russia. But her family’s stability and eventual success came at a steep cost to the Lakota people, who were the victims of stolen land, broken treaties, and the devastating loss of their culture and resources. Contrasting her family’s experience with that of the Lakota makes this story all the more powerful, and speaks volumes about Rebeccs’s skill as a writer and journalist. Again, I loved the book.

Rebecca and I connected the day before the book was published, and we had a wonderful conversation. We started by discussing why she decided to write such a deeply personal story, and how that differs from most of her previous journalistic endeavors. She provides a brief overview of the Lakota people and the laundry list of injustices they faced during westward expansion. We discuss the complicated nature of land ownership on reservations, and how those complications continue even to this day. She explains how the US’s treatment of Native American influenced Hitler and the Nazi Party, and how she personally processes her family’s role in Westward expansion by working with spiritual mentors and exploring her own Jewish faith. We also talk about her career as a journalist, how motherhood has changed her, the challenge of writing, and she has lots of great book recommendations.

Thanks to Rebecca for writing such an important and eye-opening book, and thank you for listening.  Hope you enjoy!

Photos courtesy of Rebecca Clarren and Viking Books.

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RESOURCES:

Topics Discussed:

• 3:15 – When Rebecca decided to write “The Cost of Free Land”
• 9:15 – Discussing the vulnerable process of capturing not just Rebecca’s story, but her entire family’s story and how it ties in with American histories of stolen land
• 18:15 – Discussing empathy in the difficult stories of Rebecca’s book
• 21:30 – A brief history of the Lakota and the injustices they faced during westward expansion
• 27:00 – Discussing the complicated nature of land ownership on Indigenous reservations, and how the US Government still influences land decisions on reservations
• 30:45 – Discussing the historical implications of US land theft from Indigenous peoples, including how it influenced the actions of the Nazis during the Holocaust
• 33:15 – The Six Steps of Repentance and how Rebecca processes the violent past of the US and how she benefited from it  
• 40:45 – The biggest surprise about Rebecca’s family that she learned in writing this book
• 43:15 – Surprises in Rebecca’s research about the Lakota
• 48:00 – Where Rebecca thinks the world of journalism is going
• 51:15 – Rebecca’s career trajectory
• 55:15 – How having kids impacted Rebecca’s approach to work
• 58:30 – The difficulty of writing
• 59:30 – Rebecca’s book recommendations
• 1:05:45 – Rebecca’s parting words of wisdom

Information Referenced:

• Rebecca Clarren
• The Cost of Free Land by Rebecca Clarren
• Kickdown by Rebecca Clarren 
• High Country News
• Pine Ridge Reservation
• Lakota
• Investigate West
• Sioux tribe
• Dakota
• The Regional Arts and Culture Council
• Yiddish
• Pogrom
• Abby Abinanti
• Yurok nation
• Rabbi Benjamin Barnett
• Havruta
• Torah
• Talmud
• Cathy Park Hong 
• Ann Tweedy
• Treaty of Fort Laramie
• Tim Giago
• Lakota Times
• Ed Marston
• Josh Meisel
• Haskell Indian Nations University
• Indian Land Tenure Foundation
• Lorelai Cloud
• Hitler’s American Model  by James Whitman
• Maimonides
• On Repentance and Repair by Danya Ruttenberg
• Wounded Knee Massacre
• Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe
• Remi Bald Eagle 
• Smith College
• Denali National Park
• Durango Herald
• Mariana Islands
• Betsy Marston
• The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
• Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchel
• Let the Great World Spin by Collin McCan
• Joan Didion
• Custer Died for Our Sins by Vine Deloria Jr.
• Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

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