[Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of
Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future. “This history
… is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and,
basically, the founding myths of this country,” ]
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LAKOTA HISTORIAN NICK ESTES ON THANKSGIVING, SETTLER COLONIALISM &
CONTINUING INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE  
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Amy Goodman, Nick Estes
November 23, 2023
Democracy Now! [[link removed]]

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_ Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of
Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future. “This history
… is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and,
basically, the founding myths of this country,” _

, Democracy Now!

 

AMY GOODMAN: In this special broadcast, we begin the show with the
Indigenous scholar and activist Nick Estes, co-founder of the
Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower
Brule Sioux Tribe. His books include _Our History Is the Future_,
which tells the history of Indigenous resistance over two centuries,
offering a road map for collective liberation and a guide to fighting
life-threatening climate change. Estes centers this history in the
historic fight against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock. I
asked him to talk about the two Thanksgiving stories he writes about
at the beginning of his book.

NICK ESTES: So, the first Thanksgiving story is — begins with the
Pequot massacre by members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which
really marks sort of — in my opinion, marks sort of the mythology of
the United States as a settler-colonial country founded on sort of
genocide to create, ironically, peace. And then I begin with another
story of a prayer march that we led in the Bismarck mall in Bismarck,
North Dakota, to kind of bring attention to the Standing Rock struggle
during a Black Friday shopping event, which was met by police armed
with AR-15s, who then began punching and kicking water protectors who
were holding a prayer in the Bismarck mall.

And I thought it was a really kind of jarring sort of contrast
between, you know, the past and the present, to say that while there
are sort of differences between the massacre of Pequots in
Massachusetts to the contemporary sort of fight against an oil
pipeline, nonetheless, you know, Bismarck, North Dakota, is a 90%
white community that originally the Dakota Access pipeline was
supposed to go upriver from, but then was rerouted downriver to
disproportionately affect the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. And
“disproportionate” is the language that the Army Corps of
Engineers used, as if there’s ever a proportionate risk to
environmental issues and water contamination. So, at this particular
moment, there weren’t any actions that were happening in the camps,
and it was largely at a standstill. And I think that Thanksgiving
weekend, there was an Unthanksgiving feast that was held in the camps,
and it was actually the highest point of the camps themselves, in the
sense that there were the most sort of water protectors had showed up.
So, I thought it was a good kind of contrast to show that this
history, you know, is a continuing history of genocide, of settler
colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Your book’s last words are, “[W]e are challenged
not just to imagine, but to demand the emancipation of earth from
capital. For the earth to live, capitalism must die.” Explain.

NICK ESTES: So, that line is part of this longer section on
liberation. And I think when we think about climate change, oftentimes
the question of climate change really centers on market-driven
solutions, such as, you know, green capitalism, and how do we create
markets that sort of incentivize transition to sustainable economies,
right? And I think, really, what we’re kind of like beating around
the bush is, is that it’s the system of capitalism that led us into
this economic crisis to begin with. It’s the sort of designation of
certain populations in certain territories as disposable, that has led
us into our current epoch of global climate change. And so, when we
talk about who’s going to bear the most burden when we transition,
you know, out of the carbon economy, it most likely is going to be
those populations that have historically been colonized, you know.

And, you know, what’s happening in southeast Africa is a perfect
example of why we need to transition away from not just the carbon
economy, but capitalist economies in general, because if we look at
the history of how Africa has been a resource colony for Europe and
for North America, we can look internally in the United States and
understand that Indigenous nations continue to serve as resource
colonies for the United States, whether it’s the Navajo Nation,
where I’m living right now, that is producing oil and coal to
generate electricity for the Southwest region, or whether it’s the
Fort Berthold Reservation up in North Dakota, that is, you know,
ground zero for oil and gas development in the Bakken region. We have
to understand that Indigenous nations have largely been turned into
resource colonies and sites of sacrifice for not just the United
States, but for the oil and gas industry.

And so we need to not just think beyond climate change and putting
carbon into the atmosphere, but we actually need to think about the
system, the social system — right? — that created those conditions
in the first place. And so, capitalism is fundamentally a social
relation. It’s a profit-driven system, whereas Indigenous sort of
ways of relating is one about reciprocity and a mutual sort of
respect, not just with the human, but also with the nonhuman world.
And we’re undergoing, you know, the sixth mass — sixth massive
extinction event, which is caused by not just climate change, but is
caused by capitalist sort of systems and the profit-driven sort of
motive of our current economic and social system.

AMY GOODMAN: Nick Estes, you focus on seven historical moments of
resistance in your new book, _Our History Is the Future_. You say
they form a historical road map for collective liberation. How did you
choose these histories? Just quickly take us through them.

NICK ESTES: Sure. So, I begin at the camps. I begin in the present,
you know, at Standing Rock. And then I go to the fur trade with the
first U.S. invasion, which was Lewis and Clark, who came through —
who trespassed through our territory and were stopped by our
leadership. And then I go through the Indian Wars of the 19th century
and the buffalo genocide. And then I go into talking about the damming
of the Missouri River in the mid-20th century, and then looking at Red
Power in the 1960s and in the 1970s and how all of these Indigenous
people, who were relocated because their lands were flooded by these
dams, eventually found themselves and created sort of the modern
Indigenous movement, known as Red Power, and then looking — going
back and ending actually at Standing Rock in 1974, with the creation
of the International Indian Treaty Council, which really coalesced
these generations of Indigenous resistance and took the treaties, the
1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, to the world and to the United Nations. And
to do that, they looked to Palestinians, they looked to the South
African anti-apartheid movement, who provided the mechanisms for
recognition of Indigenous rights at the United Nations. And that all
resulted, over four decades, in the touchstone document, the United
Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was
passed by the U.N. in 2007.

And so, in many ways, when we look at Standing Rock, and we look at
— if we go down flag row and we see the hundreds of tribal nation
flags that were represented in 2016 and 2017, we also saw the
Palestinian flag that was there, kind of hearkening back to that
international solidarity with movements of the Global South, and
specifically our Palestinian relatives, who, you know, today are still
facing — much like us, are still facing the brunt and the brutality
of settler colonialism, whether it’s, you know, the United States
recognizing the annexation of the Golan Heights or whether it’s, you
know, here in North America and the continued dispossession of
Indigenous territory and rights. We can see that settler colonialism
in Israel — or, in Palestine, is really an extension of settler
colonialism in North America.

And so — and then I end, you know, with — back at the camps and
looking at how these camps really provided — you know, I actually
look at a physical map that was handed out to water protectors who
came to the camp. And on that map there was, you know, where to find
food, where to find the clinics — right? — and where to find the
security, and all the camps that were represented at Standing Rock.
And, to me, that provided, you know, a kind of interesting parallel to
the world that surrounded the camps, which was 90 — you know, some
92 different law enforcement jurisdictions. You had the North Dakota
National Guard, the world of cops, the world of the militarized sort
of police state. And in the camps themselves you had sort of the
primordial sort of beginnings of what a world premised on Indigenous
justice might look like. And in that world, you know, everyone got
free food. There was a place for everyone. You know, the housing,
obviously, was transient housing and teepees and things like that, but
then also there was health clinics to provide healthcare, alternative
forms of healthcare, to everyone. And so, if we look at that, it’s
housing, education — all for free, right? — a strong sense of
community. And for a short time, there was free education at the
camps, right? Those are things that most poor communities in the
United States don’t have access to, and especially reservation
communities.

But given the opportunity to create a new world in that camp, centered
on Indigenous justice and treaty rights, society organized itself
according to need and not to profit. And so, where there was, you
know, the world of settlers, settler colonialism, that surrounded us,
there was the world of Indigenous justice that existed for a brief
moment in time. And in that world, instead of doing to settler society
what they did to us — genociding, removing, excluding — there’s
a capaciousness to Indigenous resistance movements that welcomes in
non-Indigenous peoples into our struggle, because that’s our primary
strength, is one of relationality, one of making kin, right?

AMY GOODMAN: Nick Estes, Indigenous scholar and activist, speaking
in 2019. His books include _Our History Is the Future_. He’s
co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a
citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.

_NICK ESTES is assistant professor of American studies at the
University of New Mexico and author of Our History Is the Future._

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* Pequot Massacre
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* Massachusetts
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* Standing Rock
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* oil pipeline
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* capitalism
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* Climate Change
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* colonialism
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* treaties
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