Nick Estes - Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

A touching and necessary manifesto and history featuring firsthand accounts of the recent Indigenous uprising against powerful oil companies With an urgent voice, Estes reminds us that the greed of private corporations must never be allowed to endanger the health of the majority. An important read about Indigenous protesters fighting to protect their ancestral land and uphold their historic values of clean land and water for all humans. Kirkus

This book offers a first draft of history that will serve as the last word for years to come. Combining the literary skill of the poet, the rich contextual knowledge of the historian, and the sharp edge of experience, Nick Estes has crafted a powerful account of the Standing Rock resistance, situating it in a struggle lodged deep in time and across the full reach of global solidarities. Philip J. Deloria, author of Playing Indian

Our History Is the Future brings the history of Native American anti-imperialism to the center of the study of racial capitalism while renewing the focus on political economy in Indigenous Studies; it brings the experience of the camp at Standing Rock to the study of history, and deep learning to the ongoing fight for sovereignty; it is a book by a young scholar that draws brilliantly on the wisdom of centuries of struggle. In short: you should read it. Walter Johnson, author of River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom

In addition to providing a thorough and cogent history of the long tradition of Indigenous resistance, Our History Is the Future is also a personal memoir and homage to the Oceti Sakowin; an entreaty to all their relations that demands the emancipation of the earth. Estes continues in the legacy of his ancestors, from Black Elk to Vine Deloria: he turns Indigenous history right-side up as a story of self-defense against settler invasion. In so doing, he is careful and judicious in his telling, working seamlessly across eras, movements, and scholarly literatures, to forge a collective vision for liberation that takes prophecy and revolutionary theory seriously. The book will be an instant classic and go-to text for students and educators working to understand the structure undergirding the event of the Dakota Access Pipeline. This is what history as Ghost Dance looks like. Sandy Grande, author of Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought

This extraordinary history of resistance counters the myth of Indigenous disappearance and insignificance while calling into question the very notion that resistance itself is impossible in a world saturated by capital and atrophying inequality. This is a radical Indigenous history in its finest formthat connects individual lives to global scales of political articulation while remaining attentive to intellectual formation and coalitional politics from the nineteenth century to the present. Estes draws from multiple archives and intellectual traditions and seeks not only to connect past to present but also to transform futures and possibilities for justice. Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of the Settler States

Nick Estes is a forceful writer whose work reflects the defiant spirit of the #NoDAPL movement. Our History Is the Future braids together strands of history, theory, manifesto and memoir into a unique and compelling whole that will provoke activists, scholars and readers alike to think deeper, consider broader possibilities and mobilize for action on stolen land. Julian Brave NoiseCat, 350.org

Fearless and inspiring, Nick Estes delivers a powerful rebuke of Euro-American Manifest Destiny with an Indigenous perspective that is inclusive and ideologically precise. This book correctly, if not necessarily, focuses its energy on the natural evolutionary and revolutionary pathway of Oceti Sakowin resistance. Respectful, brilliant, and insightful, This book should be considered a key ingredient to achieve the universal Native construct of balancesomething we must all have to ensure our continued existence. Marcella Gilbert, Lakota Water Protector, Warrior Women Film Project

Our History Is the Future establishes Nick Estes as one of the leading scholars of our time. This dynamic book offers a careful, deeply researched, and even-handed account of the events at Standing Rock, placing them in a long continuum of Oceti Sakowin resistance. This is a war story that links the #NoDAPL movement in the present to anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggles in the past to demonstrate the possibilities of liberated futures. Jordan T. Camp, author of Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State

It is customary to hail a bold young author as the voice of their generation. In Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes gives voice to many generations; those whove come before and those still to come. The book slips through time, evoking the scent of campfire that once indicted Indigenous people in the nineteenth centurya smoke that still lingers on twenty-first-century Water Protectors and marks them as enemies of the state. This utterly astonishing book imparts the long history of Indigenous people, their relatives, and their struggle for liberation against capitalist North Americas settler colonial violence. The long memory of the people, Estes shows, cannot be clipped by the oblivion of empire. The people do not forget. Christina Heatherton, co-editor of Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter

A mindful and dynamic text. Nick Estess narrative power gives dynamism and detailed realism to some of the most formative movements of our time. The book is expansive in its isolation and focus. The book embodies resistance and shows the true effort it takes to maintain it. Terese Mailhot, author of Heart Berries

First published by Verso 2019

Nick Estes 2019

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

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Verso

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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-673-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-672-0 (UK EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-674-4 (US EBK)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Typeset in Sabon LT Std by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed in the US by Maple Press