This is not a light read but an important one. While it appears to be about Standing Rock, don’t miss the rest of the subtitle. Nick Estes reports the long tradition of resistance as Water Protectors and Land Protectors and how settlers/colonizers have broken treaties and committed other atrocities as “civilized people” civilizing the uncivilized. I’ll be very interested if the author tackles the subject of water and land rights in the southwest.

"In a very real sense, the founding of the United States was a declaration of war against indigenous peoples."


From now on, I demand that Nick Estes' exceptional contextualization of the #NoDAPL protests, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance, be taught alongside whenever classics like Frances Parkman's The Oregon Trail, Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage, to which this book is a necessary foil and reply, and Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which Estes both amplifies and magnifies, are on a syllabus. You don't need to have read any of these other books to appreciate this book, mind, but if you aren't at least interested in having a look at one or two of them after reading it, I'm going to wonder if you even read, bro.

With its vast, 400+ year, scope and its long, scholarly title, Our History is the Future may seem like it's going to be a dry and academic study, but it's actually one of the most readable and emotionally affecting books of its kind I've ever encountered, full of candid interviews (wherever possible) with witnesses to and participants in, not only the protest named in the title, but the entire history of interactions between the Indigenous peoples of North America's Great Plains region and the waves and waves of mostly white settler colonists who came to take their land and water, kill them and their non-human relatives (especially the bison herds), infect them with diseases, sell them guns and alcohol, condescend and proselytize to and massacre them. So in addition to the scenes most of us saw on television in 2016, at which Estes (a member of the Oceti Sakowin nation who recently and proudly sent a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. The guy speaking on behalf of the Seven Council Fires? That means the Oceti Sakowin, which most of us know as the Sioux) was present, he also has much to share about the original contact, conflict and forced migrations that characterized most of the 19th century, the United States unending history of breaking treaties with Indigenous peoples, the Ghost Dance, lesser known efforts to enforce or insist on treaty rights in the early 20th century, the humongous negative impact of the Army Corps of Engineers' post-World War II Pick-Sloan plan that created several large reservoirs in the Dakotas but flooded out thousands of acres of productive Indigenous lands that were helping to feed several reservations' worth of people, and yes, both battles at Wounded Knee, in 1890 and in 1973.

He also saves a whole chapter for something that many of us -- me, for example -- never knew a thing about: continuing efforts to achieve international recognition of North American Indigenous sovereignty via the United Nations and through shared programs of solidarity with Palestinians, South American Indigenous Groups, and other ethnic and cultural minorities striving to regain or retain their rights all over the world. Estes pays special attention here with the Oceti Sakowin and other groups' joint efforts with the Palestinians -- many Palestinian activists have acted as Water Protectors since the #NoDAPL actions started, partly in reciprocation for North American Indigenous help with Palestinian protest actions over the years. As this book was published before the current genocidal war between Israel and Hamas that is killing Palestinians right and left every day, the current tragedies are not mentioned here but are impossible not to think about and weep over through every page of this chapter. I wonder if there are Oceti Sakowin or other peoples over there trying to help the Palestinians right now; I'm sure some are out there lending their voices to protests against the killing.

Indigenous Resistance is not a one-time event. It continually asks: What proliferates in the absence of empire? Thus, it defines freedom not as the absence of settler colonialism, but as the amplified presence of Indigenous life and just relations with human and non-human relatives, and with the earth.
Estes isn't nearly as interested in documenting the United States' (and some of Canada's) crimes against Indigenous peoples, though, as he is in telling the stories of those who tried to stop them, both well known ones like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull but also Moving Buffalo Robe Woman and Deskaheh and Madonna Thunder Hawk. There is much more pride in Estes' tellings than there is sorrow.

Read this.

In OUR HISTORY IS THE FUTURE, author Nick Estes paints such vivid portraits of people and events that he almost makes you feel like you are right there in the thick of the protests and their aftermath. I don't teach creative nonfiction that often, but this is high on my list to use as an example. This book absolutely has the ability to keep changing the minds of readers even five years after it was originally published.

Republished with a new afterword by the author, <i>Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance</i> by Nick Estes continues to be an important work that balances the discipline of history with an accessible narrative. Using the Dakota Access Pipeline protests of 2016 as the key event, Estes expands the narrative to look at the scope of Indigenous American resistance to settler colonialism.

The protest at the Standing Rock Reservation encampment grew to become one of the largest protest movements of the 21st century, with many of the participants taking the name Water Protectors. It showed resistance both in person and politically, making use of the courts and public opinion. This event serves as the gateway to explore over two centuries of history that, if one is honest, should be described as attempted genocide.

Estes work explains the clash of cultures, especially the conflict of private property versus the interconnected-ness of life. The way this conflict occurred in sustained campaigns and specific massacres or battles, the word used depending on the narrator or perspective of survivors. <i>Our History...</i> shows the ways resistance has changed or adapted depending on conditions and possibilities. Despite all the evidence and cases explored it is an optimistic work that believes change is still possible.

The work is strengthened by this new edition by the new afterword that has the author better able to reflect on Standing Rock and the continuing hypocrisy of a USA that espouses ideals, but continually chooses profit and possession over health and the environment.

Recommended for readers and researchers of history, politics, environmentalism, protest or contemporary politics.

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it has since come out. Absolutely Absolutely recommend. This is a must read. This look into indigenous resistance should be on everyone's tbr.

An excellent re-issue of a book that's been on my to-read list since it first published. I'm glad it finally prompted me to get to it. This part of history needs to be more widely known.