Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto.
In this award-winning book, Estes traces traditions of Indigenous
resistance leading to the present campaigns against fossil fuel
pipelines, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, 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.
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 with the encampment gone, their anti-colonial struggle
would continue.
While a historian by trade, Estes
draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a
citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires) and
his own family’s rich history of struggle.
“Embedded in the centuries-long struggle
for Indigenous liberation resides our best hope for a safe and just
future for everyone on this planet. Few events embody that truth as
clearly as the resistance at Standing Rock, and the many deep currents
that converged there. In this powerful blend of personal and historical
narrative, Nick Estes skillfully weaves together transformative stories
of resistance from these front lines, never losing sight of their
enormous stakes. A major contribution.” —Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything
“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
