Susan A. Brewer discusses her book, The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory, in which she investigates the history of the parcel of central New York land on which she grew up. Brewer and her family had lived on this land for generations when the Oneida Indian Nation claimed that it rightfully belonged to them. Why, she wondered, did she not know what had happened to this place her grandfather called the best land. She tells its story, tracing over the past four centuries the two families---her own European settler family and the Oneida/Mohawk family of Polly Denny---who called the best land home. In her presentation, Brewer addresses the challenges of researching this history of two families whose lives were profoundly intertwined on contested land.
Susan A. Brewer, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She is the author of The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory (2024), Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq (2009), To Win the Peace: British Propaganda in the United States during the Second World War (1997), and co-editor of Thinking Otherwise: How Walter LaFeber Explained the History of US Foreign Relations (2024).
