Our History Is the Future
Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
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4.8 • 10 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Oakland “Blue Collar” PEN Award
A work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance that shows how two centuries of Indigenous struggle created the movement proclaiming “Water is Life”
In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan “Mni Wiconi”—Water is Life—was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue.
In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making Our History is the Future at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The resistance camps may have been temporary, but the struggle for Native liberation continues, and the fort is falling," declares Estes, American studies professor and enrolled member of the Lower Brule tribe, in this scorching indictment of American settler colonialism, which resulted in the near-genocide of the continent's indigenous peoples. With scrupulous research and urgent prose, he declares the DAPL protest a flowering of indigenous resistance with roots deep in history and Native sacred land. Focusing primarily on the Oceti Sakowin (the "Seven Council Fires"), also known as the Sioux Nation, Estes transports the reader from the Oceti Sakowin camp of the DAPL protest, filled with tear gas, police dogs, and water cannons, back to the bloody Indian wars culminating in the forced reservation system, the apocalyptic flooding of tribal lands along the Missouri River for Army Corps of Engineers damming projects, the American Indian Movement standoff at Wounded Knee, and the as-yet-unsuccessful fight for international recognitions at the United Nations. According to Estes, it is despite these losses, or perhaps because of them, that indigenous resistance has manifested a vision "of a future without settler colonialism." In this powerful work, Estes's condemnation of the United States government is clear and resonant.
Customer Reviews
Great read
Really enjoyed this book and learned a lot from reading it