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. Water Protectors knew this battle for native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anticolonial struggle would continue. In Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance that led to the #NoDAPL movement. Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance.
Nick Estes is Kul Wicasa (Kool WEE-Chah-Shah) from the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is a co-founder of The Red Nation and an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. He has three forthcoming books: (1) Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, February 2019); (2) Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement (University of Minnesota Press, May 2019), and (3) Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation (PM, 2019).
This discussion is part of the CSCRE Discussion Series.