The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance
2023-11-15 12:00 - 13:30 UTC | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
The second in the “Out of the Frame” series hosted by the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity. Growing up, Rebecca Clarren 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. The Sinykins became an American immigrant success story. What no one mentioned was that their land, the foundation for much of their wealth, had once been reserved for the seven bands of the Lakota. Taken by the United States government, it was splintered and handed for free to white settlers. Wayne L. Ducheneaux II, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Executive Director of the Native Governance Center, will discuss these intertwined histories with award-winning journalist Rebecca Clarren; together they will explore the personal and national consequences of this legacy of violence and dispossession.
