The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance

by Rebecca Clarren

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2023

"Sharply insightful . . . A monumental piece of work."—The Boston Globe

An award-winning author investigates the entangled history of her Jewish ancestors' land in South Dakota and the Lakota, who were forced off that land by the United States government

Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious immigrant family’s origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, ultimately settling on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few decades, despite tough years on a merciless prairie and multiple setbacks, the Sinykins became an American immigrant success story.

What none of Clarren’s ancestors ever mentioned was that their land, the foundation for much of their wealth, had been cruelly taken from the Lakota by the United States government. By the time the Sinykins moved to South Dakota, America had broken hundreds of treaties with hundreds of Indigenous nations across the continent, and the land that had once been reserved for the seven bands of the Lakota had been diminished, splintered, and handed for free, or practically free, to white settlers. In The Cost of Free Land, Clarren melds investigative reporting with personal family history to reveal the intertwined stories of her family and the Lakota, and the devastating cycle of loss of Indigenous land, culture, and resources that continues today.

With deep empathy and clarity of purpose, Clarren grapples with the personal and national consequences of this legacy of violence and dispossession. What does it mean to survive oppression only to perpetuate and benefit from the oppression of others? By shining a light on the people and families tangled up in this country’s difficult history, The Cost of Free Land invites readers to consider their own culpability and what, now, can be done.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Jewish, Memoir, Native American, Judaism, Audiobook

351 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 3, 2023

Reviews

[Stephanie C · Rating 5 out of 5]

5***

This book is intensely convicting because it describes in full horrific detail the oppression and destruction of the Indigenous peoples here in America, all in the name of Manifest Destiny. Before we point the finger of injustice at foreign lands while sitting on our veritable high horse, we ought to look to our own and see the plank of oppression that we used as an instrument to beat others into submission.

Yet what sets this book apart is its unique perspective from that of persecuted European Jews who were escaping Russian pogroms into the American land of the free and home of the brave. They emigrated to the United States in hopes of a better life - well, just to be able to live - and were given, according to the U.S. government, wide swaths of lands throughout the Plains. Unbeknownst to them, this was the land cruelly and illegally confiscated from the Indigenous people, and it was on this land that they built successful generations of industry amidst wars and Prohibition.

The author, who traces her lineage back to these persecuted Jewish ancestors, discovers that their high tales of survival, grit, and perseverance were unwittingly built on the backs of the persecuted Indigenous tribes, and she she writes this as a form of reparation for the guilt and responsibility that her forebears owe because she knows that an apology from them or the government will never be forthcoming. Restitution in the form of land swaps or equivalent compensation, clearly enunciated in the Torah for the purposes of making right an injustice, will likely never happen due to capitalist greed and simply because the tangled web of ownership is entirely too complicated at this point to unravel. To the Natives, money is not nor ever will be the point, but rather their sacred land, which they believe is not to be owned but rather shared (a concept Americans cannot seem to grasp because ownership is in their DNA), should be fully restored.

I was thoroughly fascinated and equally appalled with this meticulously researched book, though I admit I became a bit weary of the constant references to dates, documents, legal battles, government edicts, and the unrelenting hammering of persecution and injustice. For those historians and readers who are hungry for explicit, corroborative evidence, you will be thoroughly satisfied. Yet, I suppose that my drained conscience is minuscule compared to those who suffered and continue to suffer. And, well, that is exactly the point. This book is important. The history is important. Knowledge of how we came to own this land is crucial. For your sake, and more importantly for their sakes, invest some of your time to read this, allowing the pendulum of perspective to swing towards those who deserve our empathy and compassion instead of derision and marginalization.

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brava, Rebecca Clarren. This history of Jews landing in South Dakota after fleeing pogroms in the Pale (the only region the Russian Empire allowed them to live—where every day was the equivalent of October 7th as Cossacks butchered, burned, and raped whole villages), is thorough and necessary history of both the exiled Jews and the Lakota whose land was stolen and offered as “free land” to settlers who would work on it.

For me the book was almost too personal to review, since my ancestral story parallels Clarren’s—from the shtetls to Oklahoma. It informed my understanding of my own family, and for that I am inexpressibly grateful.

But, beyond my personal experience, this is a necessary book of American history; it’s what’s been erased. And until we know and feel it, there will be no lasting peace. South Dakota has recently outlawed critical race theory study and Governor Kristi Noem “cut more than half of all references to Indigenous Nations and citizens from history textbooks and curricula in her state, saying she wants to give students ‘a patriotic education.’ (222)”

By the end of the book, when I was drowning in hopelessness, Clarren offered clarity:

When Native and non-Native people talk together about their shared history of trauma and loss, they build common ground says Faith Spotted Eagle, a politician, activist, and Ihanktonwan elder from the Yankton Sioux Tribe. “The Native people’s objective is to heal. The non-Native’s objective is to come out of denial.” What she calls “freedom from denial” is much more powerful than guilt, she says, and allows non-Indigenous people to step toward repair. (228)

I’m so grateful for this book—for knowledge and personal repair. (Thanks to Jan Priddy for for reviewing it.)

# # #

6/5/24 Update
After reading The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance by Rebecca Clarren, I donated to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, and yesterday I got my donation acknowledgement letter. In it, Cris Stainbrook, President of the foundation, quotes Brook Jarvis’s New Yorker article “Who Speaks for Crazy Horse” about “the unfortunate recurring history and contradictions reflected in the landscape of today’s Black Hills in South Dakota:

“So much of the American story—as it actually happened, but also as it is told, and altered, and forgotten, and, eventually repeated—feels squeezed into the vast contradiction that is the modern Black Hills. Here, sites of theft and genocide have become monuments to patriotism, a symbol of resistance has become a source of revenue, and old stories of broken promises and appropriation recur. A complicated history becomes a cheery tourist attraction. The fact of the past comes to look like the faces of those who memorialize it.”

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the product of an interesting combination: Rebecca Clarren is a journalist who has written extensively on Native American issues, and she is Jewish with ancestors who settled a homestead in SD. At some point in her career she connected that what her ancestors had settled involved the unsettling of the Lakota. She set out to review family stories with this in mind. She notes the need to hear what is said and what is not said. And to ask, Why the silence?

She juxtaposes her personal search with Lakota history; she starts with Russian pogroms in the late 1800s that prompted her ancestors' leaving. She also explores negative experiences her ancestors had in the US. She points out the parallel between the pogroms and the US treatment of Native Americans. Some of her expositions involve direct overlap, some less direct. A lot of the organization of the book explores parallel histories: while x was happening in my family, y was happening to Native Americans. Others explorations are more direct, like her explaining the Allotment Act that released "surplus" land that could be sold to settlers at the time her ancestors were taking the government up on a homestead.

This is not an excessive expression of guilt, but a realistic assessment. Nor do the settlers end up being bad guys. Clarren presents main characters in each group with compassion, and they are likeable. One exception would be the government agents who have participated in corruption. Clarren is influenced by conversations with Native Americans who emphasize healing. One such is Faith Spotted Eagle, quoted as saying, "'The Native people's objective is to heal. The non-Native's is to come out of denial.'" She elaborates on "come out of denial," explaining that it is "more powerful than guilt . . . [it] allows non-Indigenous people to step toward repair"(228). Another is Yurok Judge Abby who urges Clarren to go to her own Jewish traditions of healing. Thus Clarren spends time with a Rabbi in study of Jewish teachings on making amends after a wrong, whether one was participant or merely has been a recipient of benefits.

This is a valuable book for people interested in Native American history, in Jewish immigrant experience, in restorative justice, or who simply like reading a well written memoir.

[Jan Priddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will be book of the year. [It was—I'm still pitching it to friends a year and a half later.]

Clarren's stunning work of nonfiction belongs in the curriculum of schools, not only because it balances the mythology of the West that Americans are too fond of, but because the author details how things might be made better:

"If you believe breaking is possible, believe fixing is possible."—Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav

This is the story of specific Jews escaping the pogrom and of specific Lakota Americans who are trapped by greed, racism, misogyny, and cultural indifference. One group will thrive, and the other will struggle to remain alive. It is a story about accepting responsibility. [note: The book was written over many years and published in 2023, but parallels with what is happening in the Middle East as I write this will not escape anyone's notice.]

It is an oddly reassuring work—beautifully written with compassion and insight.
I heard Rebecca Clarion read from this account—brilliant and rare to find history I know absolutely nothing about: Jews homesteading in the Dakotas (new to me), the loss of Indigenous rights (known), and a woman willing to undertake both understanding and atonement. Her acceptance that "before you can fix anything, you must tell the truth, not just to God, but out loud to the entire community" (8).

The book reveals concurrent stories of Clarren's family's escape from Russian persecution in the Pale and successes in the United States, and the cultural and literal genocide of the White Bull family, their cultural loss of what becomes South Dakota, by the U.S. government. She honors both those who came to America desperate for opportunity and those who lost nearly everything—language, culture, home, land, and life—in order for that opportunity to be possible.

She begins and continues her story by clarifying her personal responsibility as a descendent of homesteaders and a Jew in conversation with Judge Abby who shares her values: "Our ancestors worked much harder than we do on values, and those values weren't grounded in greed."

Many years ago, a student read Vine Deloria's book for an independent reading project in my class. She was furious to learn what had been done to Native peoples. This is the follow-up I wish I could offer her today. No less damning, it offers more. Clarren is a journalist, and this shows in the clarity of her reporting, but what also shows is the meticulous research and detailed back matter of a historian, the honor and honesty of an ethical being, and the grace on the page of a literary novelist. The last time I was so deeply moved by nonfiction was Mountains Beyond Mountains, which I taught. If I were teaching, this would be included in the curriculum.

The truth of history should not be suppressed because those in power find it embarrassing.

I find it interesting that this book is what the film version of Caste aspires to be—a detailed history intertwined with a personal story of discovery. In Clarren's case, however, instead of writing purely as outraged victim, there is a sense of personal responsibility and atonement that is entirely missing from Wilkerson's work, which I was reading at the same time.

[Jifu · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Note: I received an advanced reader copy of this work courtesy of NetGalley)

Rebecca Clarren is admirably honest and straightforward as she examines the various ways in which her immigrant ancestors, who were direct victims of anti-semitic violence, trauma and repression back in Russia, were able to elevate themselves and benefit from broken treaties and government policies that traumatized, oppressed and robbed the Lakota people and the other indigenous nations of the United States. She is also fantastically thorough as she details said broken treaties policies, and provides a very welcome education. I thought that I had been doing a decent job personally filling in some of the large gaps that my school history classes completely failed me on in regards to the treatment of Native Americans (thanks to books like Pekka Hämäläinen’s Indigenous Continent, Thomas King’s An Inconvenient Indian, and David Treuer’s The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, to name a few recommended titles). But as I now see, the extent to which the US government has unjustly treated its native peoples continues to go horribly further and further than I thought I knew, and I appreciate Clarren for helping to expand my still-growing knowledge on the matter.

Also very much appreciated is the way in which she in turn has gotten me, someone whose varied ancestors all originate from Europe, to start some personal reflection of my own and begin to examine some aspects of my own life in a much more different light. And I’ll be honest, I haven’t had to go very far back to find something problematic - in hindsight, my time in the Boy Scouts was packed with quite a lot of appropriation. Hopefully, The Cost of Free Land will get others to do some hard thinking and maybe get involved in the restorative justice process, but at least for now she’s officially gotten one other person to begin viewing the past in a new lens.

This is definitely a strong recommendation, and and this is also most definitely a title I’d like to see in both the academic library I work in and the shelves of my public library.

(And for anyone who would like a book in a similar vein to pair along with this - I wholeheartedly suggest Patty Krawec’s’s Becoming Kin).

[Alexw · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh-While accurately bemoaning the tragedy of indigenous people, she stops short of asking her relatives & their neighbors to give the land back to the indigenous.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once upon a time, back in the spring, I attended a Zoom event sponsored by one of my synagogue book clubs featuring Rebecca Clarren. I already knew about her nonfiction reckoning with her familial past, but this fast-tracked it on my radar. I wanted to read this book for Nonfiction November. ….ooooor maybe in December, cos my November reading card got filled up. :P

Anywho. Maybe this book slips a little further than most into moral messaging, but that’s kind of the point. This is an “activism” book that, in part, states the facts, and then ponders paths towards retribution. Specifically speaking, Clarren’s family arrived to the United States in the early 20th century, and they took advantage of the Homestead Act to create said homestead on what is still called “Jew Flats” in South Dakota. The Homestead Act allowed for (predominately white, all non-Native) Americans and immigrants to claim 160 acres of surveyed government land, live and “improve” the land for six years, and then it was theirs.

The problem being that said land in midwestern America was, in essence, stolen (or at the very least swindled, with cultural genocide on the side,) from the Lakota peoples. Clarren’s family were barely aware of this reality. Arguably, as the victims of oppression themselves (the Sinykins immigrated to the U.S. following victimization in Russian pogroms) they couldn’t take on this mantle. But Clarren, a journalist, felt she had no other options.

Under the guidance of indigenous leaders, Clarren started studying Jewish religious texts with her rabbi, though unlike most books I read on this subject, the specifics of the research were rarely discussed, and mostly in broad terms. (Yes, religious Judaism believes in communal restitution for past wrongs.) The book itself was the start of Clarren’s teshuavah, or repentance. Side by side, she placed the narrative of her family and the narrative of the Lakota peoples. Where Rod Miller of The New York Journal of Books saw “some uncertainty in her conclusions” regarding the culpability of long-dead ancestors, I saw an intrinsically Jewish notion of struggle. Struggling with the nuances of reality, particularly in book-and-learning form, is traditionally our jam.

(Speaking of literary geekery, I gotta love how she included references from books I’ve read, like CASTE by Isabel Wilkerson, ON REPENTANCE AND REPAIR by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, and even JEWS AND BOOZE by Marni Davis. :P)

As an American, I was humbled anew by my lack of knowledge about indigenous peoples. Books like this, which in terms of policy take a straightforward and no-holds-barred approach to history help tip the scales, even just a little bit. Thank you to Clarren for her clear prose and ability to create compelling characters out of real human beings.

Beyond the dark side of American Exceptionalism/Manifest Destiny is the idea of assimilation. I’m perhaps too hypersensitive about this issue when it comes to Jewish history, where it was pervasive in some quarters but never federally mandated (the Lakota, of course, have had a very different experience.) My bigger issue is with Holocaust presentation, and how it’s used, even somewhat by Clarren, as the big example of antisemitism in the world. Clarren knows better, of course. Both of our families came from the same place, at the same time, from a violent hotbed of pogroms that predates Hitler by decades and centuries.

But I can’t extend that criticism into deeming this book is self-righteous sanctimony. To believe that sin isn’t real is to shirk off my religious heritage along with historical fact. Clarren doesn’t ask other Americans to engage in anything she isn’t doing herself. In terms of her activism beyond this book, may it bend towards justice. In terms of this book itself, as she wrote in Moment Magazine, the “entangled histories” of the Lakota peoples and of immigrant American Jews “pull and push against each other refute the idea that pieces of the past exist in isolation. In its most basic form, this is an American story. It belongs to us all.”

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary book. Not only does Clarren provide an exhaustive chronicle of the wrongs done Native Americans, but she contrasts it with an equally exhaustive analysis of the benefits her family received because of those wrongs. I especially appreciated her exploration of restorative justice, of appropriate apology and healing, and her work with her rabbi over Maimonides' steps to repair. Her conversational style throughout made it enlightening where it could have easily become a tragic monotony of crimes/injustice.

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

For nearly forty years now I have been an avid reader and researcher of Native American history in the western United States. My interest started when I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I have now read several dozen books on the subject and visited numerous historical sites in my effort to more fully understand what happened and how lives were so dramatically, and often tragically, impacted.

However, nearly all of what I have read and studied involved the early clashes of Indigenous people with land-hungry white invaders, which was then inevitably followed by violence, military campaigns, and then removal, containment, and punishment of the Indigenous people. In contrast, only a small amount of what I have read relates to the continued and ongoing racial injustices perpetrated against the same Native people and their descendants.

This book, The Cost of Free Land, deals mostly with the more recent injustices. Author Rebecca Clarren is a descendent of Jewish immigrants who fled persecution in 19th-century Russia. When the family arrived in the United States, the government, in its attempts to reduce the number of poor refugees in the Eastern cities and, at the same time, "civilize the Indians", was literally giving away free land that had very recently been taken (stolen) from Western Native tribes. So, naturally, the family took advantage of, what seemed to them, a divine windfall.

The family made good on the gift. All the children of the family succeeded in one way or another in their new country. But what cost did this success impose on those whose lands had been taken? What kind of atonement or restitution is due to those who were wrongly divested of their wealth? What does the Jewish religion teach about righting such wrongs? These are the questions that the author attempts to answer in this book.

I'm not sure the author ever arrived at a personal resolution to her questions. But she does illuminate what should be a strong moral conflict for most Americans – most of whom remain willfully ignorant of the subject or else rationalize the past and present racial injustices as "not my problem".

Overall, this was a very eye-opening and thought-provoking story, told in a way that kept my interest from start to finish.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a journalist, I so deeply admire everything that Clarren accomplishes with this book. Her ability to write a deeply personal narrative (what I imagine is a challenge after years writing only about others). Her committed source relationships and dedication to centering their narratives honestly, even if that comes at the cost of her own pride. The kindness and empathy with which she writes about her subjects (often her own family), revealing their flawed humanity without deriding them.

This book is a template for meaningful reconciliation and reparation, a thorough recounting of history that honors both Jews and Lakota, and a compelling story of ignorance to power, all in one.

[Victoria Law · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book hand in hand with Audrea Lim’s FREE THE LAND was truly an eye opener about US land policies that are never taught in schools.

[Kara Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Such a good book. Learned a lot and thought the author had a unique perspective / insight from her Jewish identity in the atrocities every non Native American has benefited from

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC: This book is critically important and should be adopted into all history curriculums. I considered myself informed about immigration of the Jews of the Settlement of Pale and knew nothing about South Dakota homesteading and Jew Flats. I also had no idea of the many ways that the Lakota people have been cheated of their land and heritage. It's written as an exploration of the author's family history and a concurrent history of the Lakota people. I found myself hoping that true reparations had been made. The author's framework of reparations based on Maimonides teaching works so well for so many systemic wrongs that have been perpetuated. Also disturbing is the lack of reparations from more recent administrations--to the Lakota people. Two minority, low caste people who inadvertently perpetuated injustice. The author offers extensive resources and this book is meticulously researched. A very important book--if the actual history isn't taught/presented as in this excellent book, it can't be known or understood and restorative justice won't be implemented.

[emily gielshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unforgettable and invaluable account of the way those pushed to the margins can be pitted against each other to maintain systems of power and oppression. Clarren does such a good job of centering the humanity of the Lakota people, robbed of their land and culture, and the Jewish immigrants who were “given” the land (and the very livelihoods stolen from the Lakota) who fled to the U.S. for a better life. Honestly this should be required reading. I will be thinking about this book for years to come.

[DaveNelda Eitreim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a difficult read because of the shame that I feel for how my government has dealt with Native Americans. It is not easy to hold up a mirror to history that clearly took land and culture and lives. It was interesting to hear how the Jewish faith deals with wrongs to move towards healing. My ancestors homesteaded in this same area of SD that the author's family lived, and my parents' neighbor was quoted in the book. History should be studied as it actually happened, even if it is not something we're proud of.

[federico garcía LOCA · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely well researched and equally well narrated account of family history wedded to national history, The Cost of Stolen Land has immediately moved up to my go-to recommendation list.

I feel immensely grateful that this document exists. So many of us in the US receive (as the book acknowledges) piecemeal, incomplete, and inaccurate history of the Indigenous peoples of this land. It is books like this one that fill this notable and horrid lacuna in our social and political educations. So many of us Jewish people in this country view ourselves only as victims of theft and genocide without understanding that victimization is not a nametag or shipping label, and that it is not only possible but common to suffer *and* perpetrate and benefit from harm that has been systematized.

Clarren writes with pathos and empathy, with well informed approach to both Jewish and (I’m hoping) Native culture.

In other words this book helps people learn the way Antisemitism and racism against Native people are linked and have been linked by dominant systems of racial capitalism and the organization and machinery of the settler state.

My only gripes are 1) possible perpetuation of the “wise old quiet Indian” trope. Unclear to me if this is something I saw in this book as it is a stereotype I grew up with in the media or if it’s something others viewed here too. And 2) the tiniest mention of Israel, twice. For a book whose main audience is Jewish Americans, I’d hoped Clarren would be more specific and explicit about the similar dispossession of Palestinian land and, given her professional background and how much do the book speaks of Dakota oil, the importance of Palestinian self-determination AS Indigenous sovereignty and as such crucial to mitigating and exiting the climate and extinction crisis

[Greg Hershman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly, a must-read for all Jewish Americans - the beginning of understanding and empathizing with how much is shared between these two peoples.

[Lara Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting comparison between the Jewish and the Native Americans being driven from their lands and how they are intertwined.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a continual process of understanding American history as it really happened instead of how we were taught (or rather, what we were not taught at all). This book adds such depth to a complicated story of people oppressed becoming oppressors, their oppression manifest as silence, generational legacy/profit, and trying to move away from their own marginalization. The US government never ceases to fail in using minority groups against one another and to uphold white supremacy. It is sickening and disheartening to read the statistics, to understand the life experiences, and recognize that Indigenous people in the US have, and continue to be, completely robbed of their livelihood in this country. What the author does uniquely in this book is take individual responsibility to show those truths, begin the process of healing, learn how to stop afflicting harm, and make amends both verbally and financially. It got me really thinking about how I could do the same, whether that is through work, activism, financial means, or person to person. I started today by making a donation to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation per the authors offered recommendation to restore native lands to indigenous people. This is just a small step, but a necessary one. I hope one others will do the same.

[Alan Ramo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent journalistic journey into the author's family history and its relationship to the US's treatment of Native Americans. Journalistic in that it is filled with facts and history, and well told. I was not at all familiar with the history of Jews in the US trying to farm and ranch in South Dakota as one of their few options to survive, let alone running the best bar in the Black Hills. While I was quite aware of the treatment of Native Americans generally, the author dives deeply into how land practices decimated a people and their culture. Hard to ignore the potential parallels with Israel and the Palestinians, which the author at one point makes explicit. The discussion of healing and reconciliation at the end seems right on point.

[Katie Bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a searing book made up of three interconnected strands: 1) the dispossession of the Lakota, 2) the Jewish immigrants who settled on the "free land" that had recently been stolen from the Lakota, and 3) the author learning about the history of her immigrant family and the "free land" they claimed. Clarren draws upon extensive family records and memories, as well as Lakota elders, records, and memories. Her call to reckon with the past and with the ongoing legacy of that past, and not to just sweep it under the rug and forget (as much of the US seems determined to do!), is a strong and powerful one.

I really appreciate how insistent Clarren was about including Lakota voices as much as possible. I would very much be interested in a Lakota-authored book as well.

I wish more books like this one were included in school curriculum. We need more reckoning with our past, and less collective denial. Across the board!! Sanitizing history into a flat, whitewashed, heroic "America First" narrative is so wrong on so many levels and does our country and our children a deep moral disservice.

And it goes without saying that moral reckoning should be combined with economic reckoning and action. It is deeply deeply shameful and wrong that we have not addressed this already.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted something to read over Thanksgiving to reflect on. This book was a really good choice for getting to think about what this holiday means for us as Americans (though I’d recommend it for any time of year).

This book explores the authors family history and how their escape to safety led to them benefiting from the violence against the Lakota. It is a thoughtful exploration of trauma, benefiting from hard and trying to figure out how to make amends.

A lot of the author’s thoughts are rooted in Jewish tradition (and her study with her Rabbi). However she also shares a lot of quotes from Lakota people she has made relationships with over the years.

I think many Americans could benefit from reading this book but it is deeply rooted in the perspective of Jewish people and the Jewish American immigrant experience. I’m glad I picked it up!

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t stop thinking about this book. I have spent my academic and professional life immersed in American history and yet I knew very little about much of the history presented here about Native Americans, Jewish immigrants, and settlement of South Dakota. From the jumping off point of her own family history, Clarren carefully contextualizes their experience with concise, but extensively documented, explanations of the greater policies and forces at play. Her exploration of how her family benefited from federal US policies while the indigenous peoples who had called the Dakotas home for thousands of years were systematically stripped of their autonomy and culture is clear-eyed and fascinating in its examination of the intersectionality of oppression and how that played out the American landscape . I was also interested in how Clarren applied Jewish teachings on forgiveness and atonement to what she learned. Reading this book makes me want to further research both my own family’s history of immigration to the upper Midwest and the original peoples of the land I now call home.

I am grateful to my friend Darcey Bennett for selecting this book for our Smith College Class of 1997 Washington DC area book club. She chose it because Clarren was one of our classmates, and while I don’t believe our paths crossed at Smith, I am unsurprised that such a powerful, well-written book was authored by a Smithie. Bravo!

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique lens on histories that have been told before, Rebecca Clarren marries the history of Jewish immigrants in America to the cruelty and extermination inflicted upon the native people of this country.

A journalist by trade, Clarren began to wonder after the stories surrounding her family's success in the United States. They were given land, essentially for free, when they immigrated to the American west. How, exactly, did they get this land? What were the conditions? Which portions of our oral history or true, and which have been exaggerated. And, most important of all, from whom was our land taken?

The respective stories of Jewish and Native persecution have been told before, and have been told better. That said, The Cost of Free Land is a special addition to the canon. It speaks to the salvation of one resulting in the oppression of another. It speaks to how folks rarely question the things they are given when they are need. It stares our lack of reflection dead in the eye, and warns us to not be complacent in our curiosity and our penitence.

[Ani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for OSC book club 2024. Borrowed from MCL. I think the author did an excellent job presenting all the material, and if she were my personal friend I would rate her book 10/10. There were some slower areas where I chose my romance read instead, but I am so glad I read this. I learned so much about early Jewish settlers in the United States and much more detail than I’ve ever understood about indigenous displacement. I want to find more native authors to learn from but I do think Clarren did a wonderful job finding a way to tell this story from her lens without appropriating.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great and def required reading for American Jews. Also a lovely discussion of what could be considered a modern day Jewish Bundism and focus on the value of Jewish diaspora while acknowledging how that impacts understandings of indigenaity. One critique is I though there could have been a little more discussion of Israeli occupation in Palestine, there was discussion in the epilogue but I thought it could have been more of a through line.

[Geri Beckman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book. While digging into her own history, the author discovered the connections between her Jewish ancestors and the Lakota people. She does a thorough job of investigating and uncovers a story that has affected each of us. She shares personal stories of the people involved at the time to life and explains the events on the state and federal levels that led to the outcomes we see today. She challenges the reader not only to think, but to act, and she describes specific ways we can do that.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book answered a lot of questions I have about ancestral harm. How do those people who descend from immigrants make reparations for harm they did not cause but that they benefit from? I love the way the author looked to her heritage for the answers. This is something I will be giving more thought and attention to in my personal life.

[Connie Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I cannot recall specific statistics that were shared in this book, I was left with sadness at the treatment of native,
Indigenous individuals by our US government. I did learn that early settlers in South Dakota included Russian Jews who left
country due to the war. Really interesting 🎧

[Lucy Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Injustice after injustice after injustice, it’s unbelievable! Very interesting how her family’s story tied in. But for my taste, it was too long. I think the story would’ve been more powerful if more content had been cut.