by Nick Estes
Haymarket
7/16/2024, paperback
SKU: 9798888900826
How two centuries of Indigenous resistance 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.
Reviews:
"In Our History Is the Future, historian Nick Estes tells a spellbinding story of the ten-month Indigenous resistance at Standing Rock in 2016, animating the lives and characters of the leaders and organizers, emphasizing the powerful leadership of the women. Alone this would be a brilliant analysis of one of the most significant social movements of this century. But embedded in the story and inseparable from it is the centuries-long history of the Oceti Sakowin' resistance to the United States' genocidal wars and colonial institutions. And woven into these entwined stories of Indigenous resistance is the true history of the United States as a colonialist state and a global history of European colonialism. This book is a jewel--history and analysis that reads like the best poetry--certain to be a classic work as well as a study guide for continued and accelerated resistance." -- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
"When state violence against peaceful protest at Standing Rock became part of the national consciousness, many noticed Native people for the first time--again. Our History Is the Future is necessary reading, documenting how Native resistance is met with settler erasure: an outcome shaped by land, resources, and the juggernaut of capitalism. Estes has written a powerful history of Seven Fires resolve that demonstrates how Standing Rock is the outcome of history and the beginning of the future." -- Louise Erdrich, author of the National Book Award winner The Night Watchman
About the Author:
Nick Estes is an enrolled member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and is an Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is an award-winning historian and journalist. Estes co-hosts the Red Nation podcast and is the lead editor of Red Media, an Indigenous-run media organization that publishes books, videos, and podcasts. He is also a member of the Oceti Sakowin Writers Society, a network of Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota writers committed to defend and advance Oceti Sakowin sovereignty, cultures, and histories. He is Winner of the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities from the Council of Graduate Schools.