First 'Thanks-taking' was US genocide

Lakota historian on Thanksgiving, settler colonialism, continuing Indigenous resistance

(Democracy Now!) Nov. 28, 2024: Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. "This history…is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country," says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.

Our History Is the Future

Our History Is the Future features a new afterword by Nick Estes about the rising Indigenous campaigns to protect the environment from extractive industries and to shape new ways of relating to one another and the world.

In this award-winning book, Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the present campaigns against fossil fuel pipelines, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations.

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the 21st century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world.

Its slogan Mni Wiconi — “Water is life” — was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before. They also knew that even with the encampment gone, their anti-colonial struggle must continue.

While a historian by trade, Estes draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires) and his own family’s rich history of struggle.

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