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A touching and necessary manifesto and history featuring
firsthand accounts of the recent Indigenous uprising against powerful oil
companies.
In this carefully researched and much-needed history of settler
colonialism in the United States, Estes (American Studies/Univ. of New
Mexico)—a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and co-founder of the Red
Nation, “an organization dedicated to Native liberation”—is particularly
focused on the resistance efforts of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota nations.
The narrative is particularly interesting for the way it connects current
environmental efforts—namely, the “Water is Life” movement at Standing Rock, North
Dakota, in 2016—with the earliest attempts by Indigenous nations to protect
their homeland, as well as with international politics. The author takes
readers back to early U.S.–Indian wars in order to examine two competing value
systems: the epic disagreement between Native-Americans and Europeans on how to
use and respect America’s land. Exploring a wide variety of historical
touchpoints, including the damming of the Missouri River, issues of eminent
domain, the massacre at Wounded Knee and its later occupation, the American
Indian Movement, and Indigenous recognition at the United Nations, Estes
elucidates how and why the Dakota Access Pipeline protest emerged. He explains
why Indigenous resistance never dies and what energized it in recent years. The
author’s account is especially impressive as he criticizes his own tribe for
attempting to ease the way for oil companies. “Now,” he writes, “Lower Brule
had crossed a picket line, betraying not only their relatives…but also
frontline communities around the world being devastated by climate change and
extractivism.” 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.
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