The Land of Everlasting Sky Format: Paperback

For fans of the series Finding Your Roots, a compelling memoir about how land connects us all—and how, if we are to mend our relations to each other and the earth, we must first reckon with our past, no matter how distant, shameful, or tragic.

When Jill Swenson returns to her mother’s hometown after her funeral, she finds a new Seven Clans Casino under construction in Warroad, Minnesota, on Lake of the Woods. There, she learns, Red Lake Nation has recently dispossessed descendants of Ojibway spiritual leader Kakaygeesick from their land—land where the family has lived for the last two centuries—and has also denied them tribal membership. 

In searching for answers, Jill meets the great-grandson of Kakaygeesick. Over weeks, months, and years, a friendship forms between them, and Jill gradually discovers what allotments, blood quantum, and the history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs have to do with her, the great-granddaughter of immigrants who homesteaded on reservation land. Estranged from her father, still mourning the suicide of her husband and the loss of their farm in upstate New York, and now grieving her mother’s death, Jill has spent decades trying to put the past behind her—but discovers the only path forward is to reckon with history.

Clear-eyed and yet deeply personal, The Land of Everlasting Sky is a compelling exploration of the history we inherit and our relationships to land and each other.

Jill D. Swenson grew up in the Twin Cities and moved to Wisconsin in high school. She graduated from Lawrence University and earned an MA and PhD from The University of Chicago before going on to teach journalism and media studies at the University of Georgia-Athens and earn tenure at Ithaca College. For a decade she lived off the grid on a small-scale sustainable farm in upstate New York; now she lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, where she works as an editor and literary consultant, belongs to a curling club and a poetry group, and enjoys walking her dog.