[We didn’t stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, but nonetheless, it
was a win. It was part of a longer struggle to radically transform our
carbon economy, our extractivist economy.]
[[link removed]]

INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE, FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO STANDING ROCK  
[[link removed]]


 

An interview with Nick Estes by David Barsamian
October 5, 2023
The Progressive
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ We didn’t stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, but nonetheless, it
was a win. It was part of a longer struggle to radically transform our
carbon economy, our extractivist economy. _

,

 

Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, an assistant
professor in American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota,
and co-founder of The Red Nation [[link removed]], an
Indigenous resistance organization. He is the author of _Our History
Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and
the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
[[link removed]]_.
This interview was broadcast
[[link removed]] on _Alternative
Radio_, based in Boulder, Colorado, in May and has been edited for
length and clarity for this print version. 

Q: THIS YEAR MARKS THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF A HISTORIC EVENT IN
NATIVE AMERICA, THE ACTION AT WOUNDED KNEE. WHAT WAS ITS SIGNIFICANCE,
AND DOES IT STILL RESONATE WITH NATIVE PEOPLES?

NICK ESTES: On February 27, there was a fiftieth-anniversary
commemoration with three days of powwows, dance competitions, and an
oral history project . . . documenting the role of American Indian
women and their leadership within the Red Power movement
[[link removed]].
In many ways, it does resonate today because you have the children of
the Red Power movement who are leading today’s movement. Whether
it’s the protest at Standing Rock
[[link removed]],
[the] Line 3
[[link removed]] [oil
pipeline], or the attempts to get the Black Hills
[[link removed]],
or Paha Sapa, back to the Lakota Nation, these are all generational
struggles. In many ways, the Red Power movement and the legacy of
Wounded Knee just continued. 

A lot of times, in the public memory of the Wounded Knee occupation,
it was the end of a sort of militant Red Power movement. In fact,
according to the memory of the participants, it was just the beginning
of something greater, because the next year, you have the founding of
the International Indian Treaty Council [[link removed]] on
the Standing Rock Reservation. You have the United Nations conference
[on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas] in
1977, and you have the Black Hills gathering in 1980 that brought
together thousands of white ranchers, farmers, and various
environmental groups to protect the Black Hills. It was a transition
point from the more confrontational tactics to something different.

Q: HOW DOES THIS CONNECT WITH THE RESISTANCE AT THE DAKOTA ACCESS
PIPELINE [[link removed]]?

ESTES: It connects in many ways. For one, the veterans of Wounded
Knee played active roles at Standing Rock. Folks like Clyde
Bellecourt, Madonna Thunder Hawk
[[link removed]], Bill
Means
[[link removed]]—they
were all there at the camps when I was there. They were just doing
what they do in these situations: They coordinate, they organize, they
push forward the sort of action-oriented locking down of equipment,
the organizing of camp life itself, and the centering on treaties and
Indigenous sovereignty.

Q: WHAT KIND OF INFLUENCE AND INSPIRATION IS DERIVED FROM HAVING
AROUND THOSE KINDS OF ELDERS WHO LIVED THAT HISTORY?

ESTES: One thing I always tell people is that what I say and what I
present isn’t actually new. A lot of it is just repeating and
building on the work that they did. When it comes to treaty rights, to
[returning] land in the Black Hills, even to the Dakota Access
Pipeline, those issues surrounding water and treaties were the issues
they were fighting in their generation. I don’t think they ever
thought they [would] resolve all of those things. That’s why they
created institutions like survival schools—to train the next
generation of children in understanding what treaty rights are and
what Indigenous sovereignty is.

For somebody like me, it took my own personal journey to discover
these things. Part of the work I’m doing is trying to elevate these
histories, because I think they’re taken for granted. The word
“sovereignty,” the notion of land back—these are things that
preceded even the American Indian Movement [AIM] and the Red Power
movement. 

Q: JOHN TRUDELL, A MEMBER ACTIVIST OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT,
USED TO SAY THE FBI STOOD FOR THE “FEDERAL BUREAU OF
INTIMIDATION.” OVER THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, THERE’S BEEN A MARKED
INCREASE IN SURVEILLANCE AND MECHANISMS OF CONTROL. HOW HAS THAT
PLAYED OUT IN TERMS OF NATIVE AMERICA?

ESTES: It plays out in many ways. One of the biggest blemishes upon
the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies is that they’ve
gotten record amounts of funding, but what is their solve rate for
murdered or missing Indigenous women? Because reservations are under
federal jurisdiction.

So if they’ve done such a great job over the years, and they’ve
been pumping so much money into these federal agencies, what are they
actually doing? We understand now that many times, they’re policing
legitimate movements that are trying to address poverty, housing, all
kinds of land issues, and environmental issues, but there’s an
overemphasis on these Indigenous-led and Black-led movements, and not
really looking at the other sort of supposed functions that the FBI
has.

A perfect example of this goes back to 1975. When you look at how many
FBI agents were dedicated to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
[[link removed]].
The whole state of South Dakota has about two active FBI agents in
their field office. In 1975, right before the shootout, there were
thirty dedicated FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. 

What was happening at that time? The U.S. Civil Rights Division found
that there was a so-called reign of terror, where dozens of murders
happened of AIM supporters and people who were suspected of being AIM
supporters. There were beatings, rapes, all the crimes the FBI was
supposed to be investigating. So the increase of the FBI presence on
the reservation had the inverse effect. 

I’m not trying to draw correlations here, but the increase of FBI
presence on the reservation happened at a time when there was also an
increase in violent crime. Why was that? Part of the inquiry should
lend itself to the fact that the FBI was playing the role of a
political police force . . . . 

The FBI was supposed to have reformed itself after the Church
Committee
[[link removed]] [in
the U.S. Senate in the 1970s], and we know that’s not the case. With
9/11, you have the creation of a massive security and surveillance
apparatus during the so-called war on terror. This was right after the
so-called Green Scare
[[link removed]] in
the 1990s, when the FBI was surveilling environmental activists, and,
in some instances, entrapping them into doing illegal activities and
infiltrating these movements. 

We saw that happen all the way up to Standing Rock and beyond. We
don’t know yet, but I’m sure there will be in years to come more
evidence of this. This is now the new normal, not just for
Indigenous-led movements, but for any legitimate protest movement in
the United States. 

Q: THIS YEAR IS ALSO THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE
[[link removed].].
HOW DID THAT AFFECT NATIVE PEOPLES?

ESTES: In 1893, on the eve of the U.S. war with Spain, Frederick
Jackson Turner, famous for the so-called frontier thesis, in
a lesser-known speech [[link removed]] talked
about this in a quote: “The germ of the Monroe Doctrine was created
in the Ohio Valley.” Meaning that these white settlers, after the
American Revolution, rushed in there to try to claim the land, because
that was the original intent of the United States—to expand
westward, to emancipate themselves from the crown, but then to
eventually expand westward.

I think it’s coincidental. I don’t think there was any kind of
conspiracy involved in terms of the Monroe Doctrine and the Doctrine
of Discovery
[[link removed]] [in
reference to the 1823 Supreme Court case _Johnson & Graham’s Lessee
v. McIntosh [[link removed]]_,
which made the Doctrine of Discovery a part of federal law]. They just
happened to fall in the same year. 

But the importance of it is that when President James Monroe was
making that speech
[[link removed]],
he was really drawing from the so-called founders of the United
States—people like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. During
the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, Hamilton specifically said the
United States needed a strong, central, federal military that could be
funded through the levy of taxes, because they faced two enemies. The
first was other European powers—Spain, Britain, and France—and the
other was powerful Indigenous nations in the West. That’s why
Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that there were
“merciless Indian savages” on our western frontier. It was almost
like a declaration of war—of what the United States would be.

When you have the codification of the Doctrine of Discovery within
federal Indian law, it turns, over a course of federal cases, Native
nations into domestic dependents. But there’s also a treaty process
to bind, and that’s what Jefferson used—the language of binding
Indigenous nations to the United States; to peel them away from other
European powers so that the United States could assert hegemony within
North America as it expanded westward. 

That’s the same mentality and ideology of the Monroe Doctrine: to
bind Latin American nations to the United States; to make them
compliant. And we saw the bloody evidence of this in terms of how it
unfolded over the last 200 years, with countless U.S.-backed coups
[[link removed]],
all the way up to the ongoing sanctions against Venezuela, a
half-century blockade of Cuba, the continued interventions in Latin
America, the propping up of rightwing dictatorships, the U.S.-backed
overthrow of Pedro Castillo, the democratically elected president of
Peru, the U.S.-backed coup of Evo Morales—it goes on and on and on.

Q: WHERE DO YOU STAND ON THE ISSUE OF REFORM VERSUS RADICAL CHANGE? DO
YOU BELIEVE IN INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS, OR DO YOU FEEL THAT THE TIMES
DEMAND RADICAL, SUBSTANTIVE CHANGE?

ESTES: I don’t think it’s an either/or. I think it’s both.
There are certain things that can make the quality of life of people
here in this country, or on this planet, much more livable with just
minor reforms. 

If you abolish
[[link removed]] the
Washington football team mascot, if you change the mascot
[[link removed]] for
the [former] Cleveland Indians [now the Guardians], those are huge
shifts, but it’s also like you’re building a movement. And that
has a psychological effect, to show that when people get together,
they can win something.

When you make these minor reforms, it shows that things are achievable
and winnable. 

The current landscape is issue-based. We’re taught to be issue-based
activists and not look at the broader picture. I think both are
possible . . . . Sure, we didn’t stop the Dakota Access Pipeline,
but nonetheless, it was a win. It was part of a longer struggle to
radically transform our carbon economy, our extractivist economy. 

But you also have to be fighting for alternatives that don’t just
simply say, “We’re going to replace this with a green economy that
will still require the same kind of colonial relationship as now.
Instead of extracting oil, we’re going to extract lithium from your
lands.” We do need those materials to transition, but it has to be
negotiated, and it has to be on the terms of the people who are most
impacted. That’s the reform side.

For the radical side, they always say “the horizon of struggle.”
Why? Because as you approach the horizon, it keeps going farther and
farther into the distance. If you don’t have that kind of
dialectical thinking about the future and how history actually works,
then you might arrive somewhere and think that it’s an OK place to
be. 

But that’s not reflective of human nature. Human nature is
constantly evolving. Human culture is constantly evolving. There are
always things—inequities within ourselves, our relationships to each
other, as well as the land—that need to be resolved. However, that
transformation, when they say revolution, it’s not an instantaneous
thing. It’s something that unfolds over generations.

Q: U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES HAS IN VERY BOLD TERMS
TALKED ABOUT THE CLIMATE CRISIS WE’RE FACING, USING PHRASES LIKE
“TIME IS RUNNING OUT
[[link removed].],”
AND “THE CLOCK IS TICKING
[[link removed]].”
WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS? IS THIS SYSTEM NIMBLE
ENOUGH TO ADDRESS IT IN A WAY THAT WILL NOT CAUSE WIDESPREAD CHAOS?

ESTES: I can’t predict the future, but I can tell you what’s
happening now. We are experiencing the effects of carbon that was put
into the atmosphere generations ago. If we think about what we’re
putting in today, how bad the changes in the weather have [been] just
in our current moment. Think about it—we’re exponentially greater
than what was put out generations ago. If we think about it in those
terms, it paints a very bleak picture.

I also think there are trends that are important. If we look globally,
if we look even at the [U.N.] Conference of the Parties
[[link removed]] [COP]
meetings, these are usually dominated by the North Atlantic nations,
the NATO nations, or whatever you want to call it. They all followed a
path of development that required an immense amount of carbon input
that the rest of the world is paying for. Therefore, if the rest of
the world is paying for that amount of carbon that these so-called
First World nations produced at the expense not just of the people
they colonized, but also future generations, then those nations also
owe, in perpetuity, reparations to the people who are also trying to
develop, because they can’t develop along the same trajectory, using
and emitting the same carbon.

India is now
[[link removed]] the
most populous country in the world, and it’s building coal-fired
power plant after coal-fired power plant. You see _The New York
Times_ and other Western media sources talking about the immense
amount of pollution that’s going to [happen as a result]. This
isn’t India’s problem—this is a First World problem, because the
First World colonized the atmosphere with their carbon pollution so
that they could develop along the same lines, and now they’re
saying, no, the Third World can’t develop that same way.

That’s not to say that alternatives don’t exist; there are. But we
also have to remove the sort of restrictions on technology transfers
for green, sustainable energy. A lot of the patents are held—most of
them by China—but a lot of them are held by the United States and
other First World nations. So [when] we talk about climate change,
we’re talking about a global project. 

In the context of the United States and Canada and Indigenous-led
movements, a 2021 report
[[link removed]] by
the Indigenous Environmental Network found that Indigenous movements
in Canada and the United States [through resistance efforts] accounted
for challenging [the equivalent of] a quarter of emissions from both
[countries]. That’s a huge amount, especially given the fact that
we’re about 1 or 2 percent of the population . . . . It shows you
the effectiveness of those kinds of [resistance] movements and
promoting a carbon-free future. 

_David Barsamian is director of Alternative Radio
(www.alternativeradio.org [[link removed]]) in
Boulder, Colorado, and author of many books, including "Notes on
Resistance" with Noam Chomsky and the forthcoming "The Architecture of
Modern Empire" with Arundhati Roy._

_A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good! Since
1909, THE PROGRESSIVE magazine has aimed to amplify voices of
dissent and voices under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal
of championing grassroots progressive politics.  _

_You have the power to make a difference at THE PROGRESSIVE by
giving us the strength to grow—allowing us to dig deeper, hit
harder, and pull back the curtain further to hold accountable those
who abuse power!  Donate
[[link removed]]_

* Indigenous Rights
[[link removed]]
* Indigenous peoples
[[link removed]]
* Climate Change
[[link removed]]
* Standing Rock
[[link removed]]
* Wounded Knee
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]