More than 100 years ago, Rebecca Clarren writes, her great great grandparents and some 30 of their relatives received "free" land in South Dakota under the Homestead Act. The family was Jewish, recently arrived immigrants from Russia, and thrilled to become farmers in America. But as Clarren found out, the land was taken from the Lakota Nation despite treaties giving it to the tribe forever. Now, Clarren and her family have begun paying reparations to the Lakota people.
We know now that free land wasn’t free by Rebecca Clarren
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