Most people hear the phrase "our history is the future" and assume it's just a nice slogan. But when Nick Estes says it, he's pointing at something a lot sharper than a bumper sticker.
If you've spent any time around Indigenous politics, or even just scrolled past a pipeline protest, you've probably run into the name. Which means nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and a historian who writes like he's got skin in the game — because he does. The idea behind our history is the future isn't nostalgia. It's a warning, and a roadmap.
Here's the thing — once you actually sit with what Estes is arguing, it's hard to unsee it.
What Is Nick Estes Our History Is the Future
So what are we even talking about when we say "Nick Estes our history is the future"? But at the simplest level, it's the title of his 2019 book: Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. But it's also become shorthand for a whole way of reading American history from the bottom up — or more accurately, from the prairie up.
Counterintuitive, but true.
Estes makes the case that the resistance at Standing Rock in 2016 wasn't a one-off moment of environmental activism. It was the latest chapter in a 200-year-plus story of Indigenous peoples refusing to disappear. The book traces a straight line from the Lakota wars of the 1800s to the Red Power movement of the 1960s and 70s, all the way to water protectors locking arms against riot police.
Not Just a Pipeline Fight
A lot of mainstream coverage framed Standing Rock as a clean energy vs. fossil fuel story. Estes pushes back hard on that. To him, it was a treaty rights fight, a sovereignty fight, and a survival fight. The our history is the future frame says: if you don't know the history of those treaties, you'll misread the present every single time.
You'll probably want to bookmark this section.
A Historian Who Shows Up
Nick Estes isn't the kind of academic who stays in the archive. He co-founded the Red Nation, a Native-led organization pushing for Indigenous liberation. That matters for how you read the book. It's not detached. In practice, it's committed. And honestly, that's the part most guides to his work get wrong — they treat it like neutral scholarship when it's explicitly partisan in the best sense That alone is useful..
Why It Matters
Why should anyone who isn't Native care about this? Why does our history is the future show up in syllabi, organizing meetings, and Twitter threads years after the camps were cleared?
Because the story Estes tells explains a lot about the country most of us think we know. In real terms, the United States likes to tell a story about itself as a democracy that expands freedom. Estes tells the story of the people who were in the way of that expansion — and who are still here.
Look, the short version is this: if you don't understand Indigenous resistance, you don't understand how power actually works in North America. On top of that, " And yet the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, and hundreds of other nations didn't vanish. Which means that's not a side note. The federal government signed treaties, broke them, went to war, and then called the survivors "assimilated.That's the plot.
What goes wrong when people skip this? They think Standing Rock was about a pipeline route. They miss the fact that Indigenous land defense is the oldest continuous political tradition on this continent. They think the "frontier" closed in 1890. Turns out, that tradition is also where a lot of modern climate justice thinking comes from Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
How It Works
Okay, so how does Estes actually build the argument? The book isn't a straight timeline. And it moves between memoir, oral history, and hard archival research. But you can pull out the engine of it pretty clearly Practical, not theoretical..
Start With the Treaties
Everything begins with the Fort Laramie treaties of 1851 and 1868. Those papers promised the Lakota the Black Hills and surrounding territory "for as long as the grass shall grow.In practice, " Then gold showed up in the Hills, and the grass suddenly had an expiration date. Estes uses this as the original broken promise that everything else hangs from.
The Logic of Elimination
He draws on the idea of settler colonialism — not as a buzzword, but as a structure. The goal of settler colonialism isn't just to rule people. Also, it's to replace them. Take the land, erase the nation, write the history so the disappearance looks natural. Our history is the future is the counter to that: we're still here, so your ending doesn't work Small thing, real impact. Nothing fancy..
Red Power and the Long 1970s
Estes spends real time on the American Indian Movement, the Trail of Broken Treaties, and the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. Most textbooks give that a paragraph. He gives it chapters. Why? That's why because that generation trained the organizers who showed up at Standing Rock. History isn't a museum. It's a relay race Surprisingly effective..
Standing Rock as Convergence
The final piece is 2016. Here's the thing — the camps weren't just protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Estes shows how social media, international solidarity, and ancestral knowledge all hit at once. That's the "future" part. Which means they were enacting a future where Indigenous law matters more than corporate permits. The history is the proof it's possible Simple, but easy to overlook. Which is the point..
The Role of Women and Relatives
One thing I appreciate — he doesn't write a Great Man version of resistance. The book centers the women, the aunties, the water carriers. In practice, that's who keeps movements alive when the cameras leave. Worth knowing if you ever wonder why some protests fade and others don't.
Common Mistakes
Here's what most people get wrong when they first encounter Nick Estes and our history is the future Worth keeping that in mind..
They treat it as a Native-only story. It isn't. Now, estes is clear that Indigenous resistance shaped labor, Black freedom struggles, and ecological thought. If you read it as "interesting to tribal members only," you've missed the thesis.
Another miss: thinking the book is anti-white. It isn't. It's anti-settler-colonial-logic. Those are different. Practically speaking, he's not arguing all white people are evil. He's arguing a system of land theft built the country, and we can't fix the future without facing that.
And the big one — people assume "our history is the future" means the past repeats. It doesn't. Here's the thing — the future isn't a copy of the past. Estes means the struggle continues, and the solutions are inherited. It's built from it.
Practical Tips
So you want to actually engage with this work instead of just nodding at the title? Here's what works Simple, but easy to overlook..
Read the book slowly. Worth adding: it's dense in the good way — every chapter has a footnote that could be its own essay. Don't speedrun it Less friction, more output..
Pair it with primary sources. Read the actual text of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty online. Then read Estes on why that text was ignored. The gap between the paper and the practice is the whole point Worth knowing..
Listen to him speak. Estes does talks and podcasts where he's looser than the book. Hearing him say "we're not remnants of the past, we're the future" in his own voice lands different than reading it Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
If you organize, steal (borrow) the framework. On top of that, map your local fight onto a longer lineage. You're not. Most burnout comes from thinking you're the first to resist. That's freeing No workaround needed..
And don't quote him to score points. Which means use the idea to check your own blind spots. I know it sounds simple — but it's easy to miss when you're performing being "woke" online Nothing fancy..
FAQ
Who is Nick Estes? He's a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, a historian, and co-founder of The Red Nation. He teaches at the University of Minnesota and writes about Indigenous resistance and settler colonialism.
What does "our history is the future" mean? It means Indigenous peoples' past struggles against removal and erasure are the foundation for present and future fights for justice. The resistance isn't new — it's inherited No workaround needed..
Is the book only about Standing Rock? No. Standing Rock is the anchor, but the book covers 19th-century wars, 20th-century Red Power organizing, and the deeper history of treaty violations.
**Do
Do I need to be Indigenous to get something out of this book? Not at all. Estes writes for a broad audience, and the structures he critiques—land dispossession, extractive economy, erased history—touch everyone living inside them. Non-Indigenous readers often say the book gave them a language for things they'd felt but couldn't name. The key is to read it without centering yourself; let the analysis reshape how you see the ground you stand on.
Why does he focus so much on water? Because water is both literal and symbolic in Indigenous political life. The fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline wasn't just about one river—it was about the principle that life itself is not a commodity. Estes shows how control of water has always been a front line of settler expansion, and how protecting it became a unifying demand across communities The details matter here..
What should I read after this? Estes points toward a whole lineage: start with An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, then move to work by Vine Deloria Jr. and the primary documents of the Red Power era. The point isn't a reading list as much as a habit—follow the citations, trust the footnotes, and let the archive lead you somewhere you didn't expect Most people skip this — try not to..
The mistake is thinking a book like this is a destination. And it's a doorway. The future he names isn't a prediction. Estes doesn't hand you a fixed conclusion so much as he hands you a method: locate yourself in a longer struggle, refuse the lie that resistance is new or doomed, and build from what was never lost. It's an invitation—and it's already underway.
