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38 pages 1 hour read

Nick Estes

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

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Themes

The Legacy and Prophecy of Indigenous Resistance

The book’s prologue, “Prophets,” describes a new way of looking at time. Estes notes that settler colonialism views time as a linear structure: Something happens; then something else happens. Conversely, Estes proposes an alternative way of considering time—as a tapestry of interwoven threads. The history and the future blend together. They are not and cannot be separated. By examining the past, one can gain a better understanding of the present and the future. The past, Estes reveals throughout the book, is filled with Indigenous resistance.

Estes’s own legacy is one example. His Grandpa Andrew and grandfather Frank Estes paved the way for his own resistance. Estes explains that the prophets to whom he refers are not fortune tellers or magicians but people who diagnose the problems of the time and find a path forward. The Black Snake became the prophecy of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a symbol of the continued violence against and eradication of Indigenous peoples. Estes draws a distinction between prophets of the past, elders whom young people listened to for wisdom, and the prophets of the present, young people who provide a new comprehension of the world around them. The book’s many stories of Indigenous resisters—Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and others—represent these prophets. Grassroot movements are bound in the past and present, in prophecy and history.

The Red Power movement (on which Chapter 5 focuses) sought to do more than secure funding and food for Indigenous peoples; it rejected colonialism as the source of these problems and others. The movement created a foundation on which AIM—and other grassroots movements—could grow. Similarly, the Keystone XL Pipeline created a foundation on which DAPL could be built. Estes describes DAPL as part of the “Indian War that never ends” (10). Later, he asserts that the genocide of Indigenous peoples is akin to the Holocaust without the finite date; rather, it continues in the present. In Estes’s understanding of time, the cycle continues.

Estes provides numerous examples of history repeating itself, developing a cyclical concept of time. This underscores the legacy of Indigenous resistance and prophecy—cycle breakers attempting to disrupt the status quo of settler colonialism, evolving tradition and approach, and embracing a better understanding of the tapestry of time to design a new future in which Indigenous life is valued and can thrive.

Familial Relationships with the Natural World

Mni Sose, a name for the Missouri River, encompasses the meaning of “being.” Indigenous concepts of land and its entities are rooted in regarding and respecting them as nonhuman relatives. Estes emphasizes the importance of this familial relationship with the natural world. To the Oceti Sakowin, the Missouri River is a member of her own nation—Mni Oyate, the Water Nation. Entities like the Missouri River cannot be owned. Land does not belong to people. These natural entities are their own beings. In fact, the Lakota saw themselves as belonging to the land.

The eradication and destruction of these natural entities means death. To the Water Protectors advocating for the river, resistance was about more than drinking water—although the resources that the river provides are an important part of the protest movement. For the Oceti Sakowin, the Missouri River is worth protecting because it is a relative; it is what one would do to enact good kinship. DAPL became a “struggle over the meaning of land” (47). To Indigenous peoples, the land and water were inseparable from their history, from their is-ness. To those favoring DAPL, however, these were resources to be exploited, extracted, wasted, and destroyed for profit.

The previous theme, The Legacy and Prophecy of Indigenous Resistance, extends within this one; the settler colonialism that spread across the US carried with it the idea that nature’s main function and purpose is to contribute to capitalist gain. The fur trade, the eradication of buffalo, and the destruction of land and water all came as side effects of capitalism and colonialism—practices that Estes argues are inseparable from Indigenous genocide and the destruction of land.

For this reason and others, Estes asserts that the Indigenous way of relating to the land is in direct opposition to capitalism and colonialism. The two cannot coexist. Pte Ska Win, White Buffalo Calf Woman, outlined the relationship between Indigenous peoples and nature, solidifying the rights of land, water, plants, and animals. The dams built through the Pick-Sloan Plan, as well as pipelines and countless other settler constructions, represent the assault and defilement of these natural entities. They reject the natural world as part of the familial relations of Indigenous peoples in a refusal to acknowledge their autonomy or rights. To combat climate change, Estes urges people to consider an Indigenous understanding of the relationship between human and nonhuman relatives to find a sustainable path forward.

Capitalism and Colonialism as Forces of Evil

Estes opens the book by discussing Thanksgiving, a symbol for white settlers of their narrative of peace between colonists and Indigenous peoples. As Estes notes throughout the book, however, white settlers and their government launched continual attacks against Indigenous nations, including the violation of treaties, the underworking of TigerSwan (and other efforts to derail and undermine Indigenous acts of resistance), the brute force used by law enforcement, and the continued Indigenous genocide brought on through violence and resource depletion. Sterilization and sexual violence pockmarked the face of US history. President Abraham Lincoln sentenced 38 Lakota in the largest mass execution in US history. White settlers received rewards for scalping Dakotas remaining in Minnesota. These are just a few of the atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples. Estes explains that, unlike the Holocaust, the attack on Indigenous peoples is never-ending as long as capitalism and colonialism continue to prevail. The US holds Indigenous peoples as prisoners of a war that has no end.

Capitalism and colonialism are intrinsically linked to each other and to climate change, the destruction of land and water, and genocide. Although the methods the government uses may not look exactly like historical examples, the roots are the same. Eminent domain and profit drive treaty violations and continuing atrocities against Indigenous nations and nonhuman entities. Estes provides a modern example of how corporations control law enforcement, using it as a personal security service: Responding to the call of corporate greed, law enforcement sprayed tear gas and used rubber bullets against peaceful, unarmed Water Protectors protesting DAPL.

Colonialism, which is rooted in global imperialism, has always been tied to racial abuse as a means of wealth advancement. White settlers in the US fall in line with this practice, using Indigenous bodies and land for their own gain and discarding them when they are no longer useful. Estes suggests that the connection between capitalism and Indigenous violence is most immediately evident in violence against Indigenous women, whose bodies white male settlers have historically viewed as commodities for their advancement and pleasure. The famous story of Sacagawea in history books fails to acknowledge the Shoshone woman’s enslavement and physical abuse. Border towns surrounding reservations have a widespread reputation as representing danger for Indigenous women, filled with men eager to use their bodies.

Estes emphasizes throughout the book that colonialism and capitalism cannot coexist with the Indigenous way of life. The former will always seek to waste and eradicate the latter. Indigenous resistance is about advocating for an existence outside of these two oppressive practices.

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