This book was really informative about South Dakota, one of my favorite places. We know that land stolen from the Lakota was given away freely to white homesteaders, but we don't think about how Jews were included as beneficiaries. Clarren reckons her family history, from Russia to the Great Plains, to investigate how she's benefited from generational wealth at the cost of Lakota prosperity and autonomy.

I heard the author read her work pre-publication, and was immediately intrigued! Complex, layered, and beautifully researched, this is a timely read. I highly recommend it.

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.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.
This was fascinating; I'd never ready anything like it before!
I had never really considered the implications of the homestead act in relation to the Native Americans, an omission fueled by my privilege. But this made me cry, several times. The author traces both her own history, and also has extensive contacts with Native people to round out her history.
One thing this book really excels at---Yes, it traces the broken promises of the US government to Native nations in the 1800s. But this book also takes it beyond this, and even beyond boarding schools, to examine the many ways in which the government has broken promises and treaties and hopes right along up to our day. I am stunned at how little actual power Native nations have over even their own reservations.

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.

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