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

Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (2019) is a work of nonfiction by Nick Estes that centers on the story of Standing Rock and the Dakota Access Pipeline. Estes outlines this story within the context of a historical account of the US government’s treatment of Indigenous peoples and their strong resistance against colonialism and capitalism.

Nick Estes is Kul Wicasa, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe within the nation of Oceti Sakowin Oyate. Estes is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. He cofounded The Red Nation, a social justice organization that consists of a coalition of activists focused on Indigenous liberation.

Estes’s book emphasizes how colonialism and capitalism created a foundation on which the US government repeatedly targeted and attacked Indigenous nations, separating Indigenous peoples from their connection with the land, depleting their resources, and repeatedly denying their humanity. Estes rejects the acceptance of capitalism as force of good, revealing how it has historically created an excuse to kill and repeatedly relocate Indigenous peoples. Focusing mainly on the nation of the Oceti Sakowin, Estes shows how resistance by Indigenous peoples is bound in their ancestry and how time is woven together like a tapestry, unlike the linear conception of time perpetuated by Western society. Indigenous women have historically been the most affected by the evil forces of capitalism and colonialism and have therefore led many organized resistance movements, including #NoDAPL. Because Indigenous prophets recognized the problems of the time and imagined a different future and a path forward, Indigenous peoples inherited a roadmap for opposing the US government’s continuing attempts to persecute and remove nations like Oceti Sakowin.

This guide uses the hardback version of the 2019 book published by Verso.

Plot Summary

In the prologue, Estes provides context for the #NoDAPL movement and reveals how Indigenous prophets developed a roadmap for resistance, leading to the Water Protectors’ protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Chapter 1 outlines the history of the Dakota Access Pipeline and its origins in the Keystone XL Pipeline. Estes details how the US government’s use of eminent domain is rooted in a long history of governmental denial of treaty adherence and a failure to recognize the familial relationships that Indigenous peoples value between human and nonhuman kin.

Chapter 2 details the emergence of the Oceti Sakowin as a nation and its early encounters with the US government, providing a counternarrative to the historical accounts in colonial textbooks, which describe the American countryside as a largely unsettled and vicious land. Chapter 3 focuses on the US government’s continual efforts to invade and eradicate the Oceti Sakowin. Estes describes the genocide of Indigenous peoples at the hands of the US government through violence and resource depletion. Treaties signed between the Oceti Sakowin and the US government—often forcibly and always without the influence and input of Indigenous women—strongly favored the US government and were nevertheless violated repeatedly in pursuit of land, resources, and the eradication of Indigenous peoples. Chapter 4 describes the Pick-Sloan Plan, a governmental action that allowed for the removal of Indigenous peoples and the destruction of Indigenous land through the damming of the Missouri River, an important nonhuman relative to the Oceti Sakowin. The Pick-Sloan Plan created a basis for the Army Corps of Engineers to later use eminent domain and operate outside treaty parameters to build the Dakota Access Pipeline. Flooding from the dams forced Indigenous peoples from their homes on reservation land and destroyed vital hunting and farming ground.

Chapter 5 centers on Indigenous resistance in the 1960s and 70s, particularly the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the occupation of Wounded Knee, as well as Alcatraz and other acts of Indigenous resistance. AIM spawned an important 1974 gathering at Standing Rock that developed into the International Treaty Council. Chapter 6 emphasizes the campaign for Indigenous peoples to be recognized by the United Nations, which led to the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The International Treaty Council developed through AIM’s efforts played a central role in this historic event. Chapter 7 reflects on the ways that these historical movements and atrocities interweave, revealing the cyclical structure of time that provides a roadmap for the future as well as a means to resist the status quo. Estes’s book fulfills its title. It calls for understanding history to understand the future and to fight the forces of evil that deny the humanity of Indigenous peoples and outsiders to Western culture—and destroy the planet on which we all live.