How Settlers Get Away with Murder

“[A] damning exposé … A chilling reflection on a deeply rooted, systemically enforced component of the Americas’ violent colonial legacy.”
—Publishers Weekly

“With remarkable depth and precision, Liza Black has conducted an extraordinary investigation into the life and tragic death of my mother, Levina Moody. Her commitment to uncovering the truth has surpassed that of any official investigative body… . Her work is not only compelling—it is essential to all who have lost a loved one. I look forward to reading much more from her in the future.”
—Vanessa Hans, daughter of Gloria Levina Moody

“Liza brings forth alarming accounts of our ancestors’ untold stories. The read created such an emotional impact in confirming our ancestors’ strength and powerful resolve.”
—Cherokee Nation relation of Lydia Kingfisher

“How Settlers Get Away with Murder is a phenomenal contribution to our understanding of the ongoing violence perpetrated throughout the Americas against MMIWGT and should be a call to action for more research, reporting, and, ultimately, accountability.”
—Randall Akee, Julie Johnson Kidd Professor of Indigenous Governance and Development, Harvard Kennedy School

“Courageous and hard-hitting, sometimes speculative, but relentless in its search to uncover the truth, How Settlers Get Away with Murder forces us to confront the systemic realities that continue to make America a dangerous place for Native Americans.”
—Colin G. Calloway, professor emeritus, Dartmouth College

“Delivered with compelling evidence and unflinching prose, Black exposes the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people as a symptom of settler colonialism’s hunger for power and control.”
—Hi‘ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, assistant professor, Yale University

“This powerful and unromanticized exploration of Indigenous experience in the United States, Canada, and Mexico is a tour de force, masterfully casting vital light on, among other things, what it means to be Native in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”
—Michael C. Lambert, author of Up from These Hills: Memories of Cherokee Boyhood

“Liza Black’s book could not come at a more critical time—when the abduction and murder of Indigenous girls and women, as well as Two-Spirit people, are at an all-time high, while little is being done to prevent this hideous phenomenon that is the product of ongoing white supremacy and lingering colonialism.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

“In How Settlers Get Away with Murder, Liza Black offers a searing act of recovery: She exposes what the archive was built to hide. Across five carefully reconstructed cases, Black follows Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people whose lives were fragmented, buried, or rewritten by the state. Black reveals that these are not a series of tragedies but a revealing pattern—shaped by law, jurisdiction, and the power to control the story.”
—Sarah Deer, University Distinguished Professor, University of Kansas

“In How Settlers Get Away with Murder, Professor Liza Black, a Cherokee Nation citizen, highlights the historical epidemic of Murdered and Missing Indigenous People through an examination of five individual cases. She not only examines the forensics of each case but skillfully frames each case within the broader context of colonialism, tribal history, and authority. In doing so, Professor Black eloquently illustrates that these cases do not exist in a vacuum but as part of a greater, troubling story of the shortfalls of colonial justice in Indigenous communities. She has given a voice to five of the victims of this crisis, making sure their stories are not forgotten or go untold.”
—Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr.

“In this impressive investigative work, Liza Black identifies gendered violence against Native peoples as a central feature of North American history and locates contemporary violent attacks within a longer history of colonial imposition and domination, as well as resistance. Few other works in contemporary American Indian history offer such exciting and forceful engagement.”
—Ned Blackhawk, author of the National Book Award winner The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

Liza Black is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and an associate professor of history and of Native American and Indigenous studies at Indiana University. Her first book, Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960, reveals how Native actors navigated Hollywood’s racialized structures.

As a 2024-25 Racial Justice Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School and a 2021-22 Visiting Scholar at the University of California Los Angeles, she completed How Settlers Get Away with Murder. Her research and public scholarship examines the intersections of Indigenous history, representation, and policy.

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