Our History Is The Future points a way forward, with solidarity and without sentimentality, to an idea of Indigenous land alive with ancestry and renewal. And it was, in Estes' words, "Indigenous generosity - so often exploited as a weakness - that held the camp together." This was not only a protest this was a community of collective resistance and cooperation pitched against the forces of greed and exploitation. Nor was the recording of prayers or ceremonies."
No photographs of children, or of anyone, were permitted without consent. Media were required to report to the media tent. Alcohol and drugs were strictly prohibited. Starting at the north gate, where new arrivals checked in with camp security, it was the 'main drag' of the 'Indian city' - the tenth-largest city in North Dakota at its peak. Flag Row - a half-mile procession of more than 300 Indigenous national flags that lined each side of the road - cut through the heart of the camp. "All one had to do was walk through the camp to witness that dream.
Estes relates that "Indigenous people, ruled, only possessed 'occupancy' rights, meaning their lands could be taken by powers that 'discovered' them: 'The Doctrine of Discovery'." To unpack this decision, Estes cites Onondaga international jurist Tonya Gonnella Frichner, who argues that the "newly formed United States needed to manufacture an American Indian political identity and concept of Indian land that would open the way for the United States in its westward colonial expansion." Former Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall articulated the precarious status of Native Americans in the 1823 decision, Johnson vs. The book also provides specific historical context for notions of land and property that animated white settlers and enterprisers.
To white settlers and enterprisers by and large, land meant power and property and corresponding violence in the service of wealth, resulting in the widespread annihilation of Indigenous peoples and their cultures. For the people of Standing Rock and Indigenous people more broadly, DAPL was yet another violation of sovereignty by outsiders with an entirely different notion of what land means. He writes about Indigenous forms of resistance that resorted to force when necessary, and negotiation and the courts when possible, even if, in the end, all often proved futile.
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