Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2019

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-4

Chapters 5-7

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 2-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 2 Summary: “Origins”

At the core of Oceti Sakowin history and values is the connection between human and nonhuman relatives. Pte Ska Win, the White Buffalo Calf Woman, organized the first treaty between humans and other-than-humans, recognizing plants, animals, and Earth as relatives. Estes explains that the white and Indigenous concepts of land are at odds—and that land was the driving force for the genocide of Indigenous peoples by white people in the US. White settlers view land as something to possess and profit from, directly contrasting with the Indigenous view of land and natural resources as nonhuman relatives.

White colonial settlers viewed the Missouri River and US land as untamed and wild. They created the name “Sioux” for tribes belonging to Oceti Sakowin; to white settlers, “Sioux” meant “criminal” and was used to justify Indigenous genocide. However, the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota nations did not use the name “Sioux,” instead adopting the name “Oceti Sakowin Oyate,” meaning “Nation of the Seven Council Fires” (69). Oceti Sakowin origin stories are deeply rooted in the land, but colonial settlers spread origin stories that claimed the “Sioux” were latecomers to the western Missouri River region.

The Oceti Sakowin followed a matriarchal society that revered women and Two-Spirits (gender nonconforming or gender-variant peoples). Their governance was based on community decisions that emphasized kinship. As white colonial settlers sought to overtake lands occupied by Indigenous peoples, however, they spread violence, rape, and disease. Women who held important positions in Oceti Sakowin society were demeaned and subverted. Male white settlers brought with them a heteropatriarchy that deconstructed matriarchal power.

The story of Sacagawea exemplifies how settler colonialism violated women’s bodies and used them for capitalist gain. White narratives of Sacagawea depict her as a benign guide for Lewis and Clark, whom these narratives revere for their westward expeditions. Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to establish peaceful trade relations with the Oceti Sakowin, a flourishing and powerful nation. These narratives fail to acknowledge the enslavement and abuse of Sacagawea. Lewis and Clark’s racist and violent attitudes toward Indigenous peoples ushered in a wave of genocidal acts and capitalist measures that forcibly removed the Oceti Sakowin from the land, stripped Indigenous peoples of their rights, and diminished important sources of food such as buffalo and beavers. Women were largely removed from political decisions and were not allowed to contribute to trade agreements and treaties. As settler colonialism infiltrated Indigenous societies, Indigenous women were left without bodily and political autonomy. Therefore, Indigenous women became vocal leaders of resistance, as in the fight to oppose DAPL.

Chapter 3 Summary: “War”

Estes asserts that settler colonialism and genocide are intrinsically linked. He calls out state violence toward the Water Protectors as a continuation of systemic violence against Indigenous peoples that is deeply rooted in US history. The control of river trade along the Missouri River separated Indigenous peoples from the land and destroyed their means of resistance. Estes holds that the very founding of the US is a denial of Indigenous humanity and an act of war. The US government used treaties, surveillance, and threats of violence to undermine Indigenous systems, such as the first Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, in which the government required the Oceti Sakowin to elect a superior leader to represent all the nations—an act counterintuitive to the Oceti Sakowin’s political structure.

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 dissolved when the appointed leader—Conquering Bear—was shot after pleading for a peaceful resolution to a dispute over a lame calf. The Oceti Sakowin resisted unfair trading posts and treaty agreements. In response, the US military targeted buffalo herds, removing an important resource for the Oceti Sakowin. In addition, the military sent troops up the Platte River to slaughter 86 Sicangus, mostly women and children. Many women were raped. When Tasunka Witko, also known as “Crazy Horse,” returned home, he found his community ravaged, inspiring him to resist.

To the east, the Dakotas likewise felt the blows of resource depletion and treaty annuities due to white settlements, and the US government enacted a murderous campaign against the Lakotas despite their brave acts of resistance. The Oceti Sakowin were repeatedly targeted. By 1876, most Lakotas were starving and lacked the fundamental resources they needed to survive. The few who did not live on reservations, including Crazy Horse, retreated into the Black Hills to evade the Army. On June 25, 1876, George Armstrong Custer led a calvary against resisters of many different Indigenous tribes, only to be defeated.

Following this defeat, the US government established new acts to limit the power of Indigenous peoples on reservation land and parcel out Oceti Sakowin land to white settlers. These movements had major detrimental effects on Indigenous populations: Children were sent away to boarding schools that emphasized abuse and indoctrination, important traditions were forbidden, and rights disintegrated. The Ghost Dance—an important tradition that was believed to usher in an era of returning to human and nonhuman harmonious relationships—was an act of anti-colonial resistance. Sitting Bull was the first to become a target as the US government attempted to eradicate the Ghost Dance from Indigenous life; the government’s growing anger toward the tradition led to the massacre of unarmed Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee.

Chapter 4 Summary: “Flood”

During the 20th century, the US government, operating through the Army Corps of Engineers, used the power of eminent domain to remove and relocate Indigenous peoples. Federal policies, such as the House Concurrent Resolution 108, ceased to recognize Indigenous nations and enabled the government to amplify its power over Indigenous nations, gain control of reservation land, and sell it to private buyers. Dams were constructed along the Missouri River, flooding seven reservations.

The Pick-Sloan Plan created a foundation on which the Army Corps of Engineers could assume powers that directly violated the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and Winters Doctrine (which gave tribes senior rights to water flowing through originally defined reservation boundaries despite the diminishment of those boundaries). In addition, the Pick-Sloan Plan established the foundation for the government and the Army Corps of Engineers to enact DAPL in 2014. Because river trade and the annihilation of buffalo had already weakened the Oceti Sakowin, the People of the Seven Council Fires found resistance challenging. Estes explains that “a third of the residents of Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Lower Brule, Crow Creek, and Yankton reservations were removed to marginal lands or were forced to leave the reservation entirely” (139). Although the Pick-Sloan Plan did not directly authorize the Army Corps to seize Indigenous lands or displace Indigenous peoples, the Army Corps was able to condemn reservations lands that had flooded as a result of the dams built under the plan.

Prior to the Pick-Sloan Plan, Indigenous nations operated many successful agricultural enterprises, including cattle ranches and farms, that gave reservations autonomy, food, and a means of resistance. The dam projects of the Pick-Sloan Plan destroyed these agricultural endeavors and literally starved Indigenous peoples off their land. The Oahe Dam destroyed the Cheyenne River’s largest community, Cheyenne Agency, forcing 30% of its members to relocate. This scenario played out repeatedly at the Lower Brule and Yankton reservations. The Big Bend Dam dislocated the Crow Creek and Lower Brule reservations, which had already relocated once as a result of the Fort Randall Dam. Because the dams eradicated wildlife, many Indigenous nations were forced to depend on commodity foods, which had severe adverse effects on Indigenous health. However, because of the Oceti Sakowin’s continued resistance, despite all odds, the attempts by the Pick-Sloan Plan to relocate and eradicate Indigenous peoples were markedly unsuccessful.

Chapters 2-4 Analysis

As Estes outlined in the previous section, the relationship between human and nonhuman kin is central to the origins of the Oceti Sakowin. Emphasizing the theme Familial Relationships with the Natural World, in this section Estes tells the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman and how she established the rights of nonhuman relatives. Understanding Indigenous resistance—especially in regard to the Missouri River and other natural entities—requires understanding this kinship. In contrast to the relationship of white settlers to land—who viewed the western US as untamed and wild and regarded Indigenous peoples as unrefined and criminal—the relationship between Indigenous nations and the land is highly evolved.

Estes provides historical accounts leading up to DAPL that reveal the perpetuation of violence brought on by capitalism and colonialism. The story of Lewis and Clark differs starkly from the one presented in settlers’ narratives, in which the two men led a peaceable exploration expedition. Rather, the men were sent to make peace with already established nations, including the Oceti Sakowin, but instead brought a storm of violence. This is what Estes means when discussing systemic violence—that violence against Indigenous peoples is so interwoven into US history that it cannot be separated from our understanding of how Indigenous peoples move and exist within this white settler world. Violence against Indigenous peoples is rooted in precedence. This foregrounds the theme Capitalism and Colonialism as Forces of Evil.

Estes suggests that the very declaration of the US is an act of war against Indigenous peoples. To believe otherwise is to fail to recognize the already established, highly developed cultures that existed on this land prior to colonial settlements. This concept creates a basis for the idea that the war on Indigenous peoples has never reached a culmination; it stretches from the eradication of buffalo and the fur trade’s destruction of the Missouri River to the flooding of the land surrounding the Missouri River as a result of the Pick-Sloan Plan, to Wounded Knee, to Mount Rushmore, and to DAPL. The attempted genocide of Indigenous peoples is the earmark of Western civilization and colonialism. Capitalism is inseparable from the genocide of Indigenous peoples because it is a system that uses bodies for profit and nothing else. When they are no longer seen as monetarily valuable, they are expended. In this way, both nonhuman entities—water, land, plants, and animals—and Indigenous peoples are trapped in a cycle of use and abuse at the whim of corporate greed.