In Three Takes: How the Past Transcends Both Present And Future
History Defines and Conscripts by E. Paris Whitfield
Nick Estes's Our History Is The Future explores Native resistance to genocide and Land dispossession. He actually opens the book with the statement "Peace on stolen land is borne of genocide." It is within this vantage point, I read the entire book, and follow the path Estes takes the reader, which reveals a disturbing reality of how the US has built itself on top of the bones and blood soaked soil of America's Indigenous people.
How the US obtained its land is foundational to understanding Estes's explication of First People's realities, and what they still face. With the European arrival, in 1513, with the Spanish; in 1585, with the English; or in 1562, with the French, history reveals that they came with intentions of extracting resources: gold, land, and laborers.
As the premise of their very reason for being in the "New World" conflicted with the societies already here and their interactions with them, conflict was bound to erupt into violence.
Estes shows us that Europeans: Spanish, English, and French brought with them the means by which to extrapolate these resources: a system borrowed from feudalist race creation, as identity, used to "subordinate, to kill, and to enslave others--and use that difference for profit making," says Estes.
The history illustrates how the system of oppression and divisive tactics were used by Europeans to enslave, control, or kill what they could not change in Indigenous people. But, equally damaging, for Natives who survived, socially constructed narratives about them added to their racialized exclusion as undesirables, uncivilized, and unassimilable, which justified European settler colonialism expansion and burden to tame the wild land and its inhabitants.
Estes writes, "There is no separation between past and present, meaning that an alternative future is also determined by our understanding of our past. Our history is the future," is not empty conjecture, but more of ancestral remembering.
Looking back, we can dissect and debate for hours-on-end about Natives' unfortunate encounters with Europeans. But, Nick Estes's Our History Is The Future isn't about just evaluating what happened; but what are the parallels, narratives, scapegoats, that the US have in their arsenal today, which could easily have future harmful outcomes: developing pipelines, fracking, mining, all the while encroaching on Tribal sovereignty and sacred sites.
In Our History Is The Future, Estes points out these two concepts: capitalism, as an economic system, which Estes defines as being able to "transform both humans and nonhumans into labor and commodities to be bought and sold... these ways of relating also exist in opposition to capitalism's twin, settler colonialism."
And, the second concept being the social system of settler colonialism, by which the "imperial power seizes Native territory, eliminates the original people by force, and resettles the land with foreign, invading, populations," which for the colonial powers in the US meant bringing in more of a European (white) population, which at times that designation has changed.
History defines and conscripts, but it can also be used as a call to action. Estes sets up the reader to see, and critically analyze, what is happening today, and what potentially will happen tomorrow (and years to come), as sovereigns, connected to Indigenous Peoples struggles to reclaim their autonomy, as full. Because without them, the US and international laws will continue to favorably judge the rights of the imperial state's power (the US), and criminalize Indigenous “illegal” resistance.
Native (and Black) people in this country, unlike the myths, have fought with vigor and valor to be free from subjugation and state sanctioned violence with "armed struggle" and "diplomacy." Yet, at every turn they have been murdered, erased from history books, or imprisoned, displaced on reservations.
Estes writes, "Indigenous life could not be remade inside reservations, not within a colonial system, but only through the complete destruction of both," which sounds similar to more recent events like "Black Lives Matter," but even that fight, struggles, for full personhood and free from state sanctioned violence and access to the US "dream" is borrowed from the historical Civil Rights movement.
The thread borrowing from historical events that shaped Indigenous and Black people's struggles, have oftentimes found neither does prison nor reservations provide the ability to remake one's existence within the reserve, or within the prison industrial complex; as both serve the colonial system that is not called, in modernity: hegemony.
Paris: I think this gives us a good foundation by which to build on some of The our Future, thoughts, observations, or critiques regarding Nick Estes's Our History is, yes?
Speaking of which, there is a jewel buried in the title itself. Can we start with some first ideas about the title, and then give your name? Let's begin the book review, like that, okay?
When I think about the title Our History Is Our Future, I immediately hear my elders' voices saying "there isn't anything new under the stars." It was their way of saying "what's old is new again and what's new again will soon be old." It's a sentiment that rings truer, because political rhetoric (decimating of native land for rare earth minerals), and harmful socio economic legislations (cross multi-state tar sands oil pipelines) are conversations, and acts, that are being repeated, but through different framings.
I am Paris, host of Study & Struggle (SAS) at a New York State prison in the Hudson Valley (Eastern NY Correctional Facility), and Bryan and I are teaming up to do another collaborative book review. But, we are changing it up a bit. We are bringing in another one of our SAS book reviewers, Marcos "Ur." Espinal, who last co-reviewed Angela Davis's Autobiogrephy. Bryan, let's start with you.
What Persists from Our Past by Bryan Penarella
Nick Estes looks at the NODAPL movement and the struggles that the Natives face today, as their land and water was stripped from them in an attempt to destroy any possible future that they might have. Simply put, water is life: when you control it, you essentially control people's life, or death.
The Natives heavily depended on their land, still do, for substance, ceremonial practices, and maintaining their cultural identity, which all relies on having access to their rivers, streams, lakes and so forth. All of which has had a price tag (figuratively) slapped on their resources and are being thought of as commodities. No longer are Indigenous values adhered to, Europeans do not want the land to be shared but to divide and capitalize off of the resources, unlike the Indigenous people believed the land and resources to be purposed for.
Estes is showing the reader that presently capitalism and its "cousin" settler colonialism has their grips of Native people's lives and resources.
For one, Estes draws US history, which ranges from the raping of the land (and Native women) to the oil boom and the fur trade. These similarities demonstrate who 'things' and people were being made into: commodities. In either instance, First People were killed, caged (on reservations or prisons), displaced, replaced, and exploited as a means of extraction of resources, for Europeans.
Estes points out the benefit, as settler colonialism mandates, ridding the land of the undesirables, at the same time as eviscerating Natives' way of life, which did not happen overnight but are practices end tenants that are persistent from Indigenous people's past. And only when we lock backwards, can we understand what happened and where this exploitative, eradication, replacement, erasure, and containment plan is going.
But Estes takes it a step further, he retells the terrors brought on by white people's desire to incarcerate the water through dams. When you read Our History Is the Future, you are confronted with this uncomfortable reality: everything that the Europeans couldn't control or erase, they contained within some prison.
Dams were used to destroy the Natives' untameable land and people, in order to place them (both) within open air prisons constructed for them.
Estes punctuates the reality that history is ever present, when he highlights what is happening, today, in Gaza with the Palestinians. The comparison between the struggles,
strife, and resistance of the Indigenous Nations in the US and Palestinians are demonstrative of settler colonialism.
Colonial power to control, erase, and imprison are tools used to silence dissent and stifle uprising against resistance and genocide.
When I set with this reality, I realize that personal responsibility, though important, is not the only thing “lacking” as some narratives suggests, in Black and Indigenous people's communities; being inside a prison cell is part of a larger narrative starting with historical events determining who are the undesirables, and who are not, which is then upheld by laws.
Bryan: Paris, the title certainly held my attention for sometime, before reading the book.
Paris: [laughing] Bryan, you started reading the book, while at the package room where we picked the book up.
Bryan: [laughing], I know, but if you recall: we were waiting after we picked up our SAS books for a long time.
The title appears simple, "Our History Is the Future," but to me, it’s more of a warning, a prayer (to wake up!), and an invitation: if we are brave enough to acknowledge that our past has provided the tools for our resistance today and for our future.
I am Bryan, a SAS book reviewer, and while I'm excited to be in conversation with you two: Paris and Jr. (Marcos Espinal), I am also reminded that each of us have Indigenous roots. My maternal side is Puerto Rican, I'm proud of my Taino roots. Can you both say a little about how reading this book resonated with you? Paris, I know you spoke already, but can you speak to this question, before Jr. shares his thoughts with us?
Paris: Sure. The book certainly gave me a wide breadth of emotions, especially thinking about Indigenous and African elimination as/is "the organizing principle of settler society," as Estes writes.
My maternal side has indigenous roots from the North Carolina/Virginia border. I have heard stories about my great-great-grandmother, and I had the good fortune of meeting her as a child. Her name is Claire and she married a formerly enslaved man, Walter. I'm proud of my ancestors, and this book certainly helps me to understand the warrior blood, from both sides, that I have coursing through my veins.
Activism in Our Collective Will by Marcos "Jr" Espinal
Taking the lessons from the past, as a guide, to infuse with activism today, is the only hope for our collective future. What I mean is this: Estes makes the case for indigenous resistance, and he does so by highlighting that true freedom intersects with each marginalized group's shared resistance against the exploits of settler colonialism and capitalism.
Only through community can messaging of who we are, survive long pass the colonizer's myths of what we are. The relationship we have with our future can only come from community; and that history is learned by looking back on those lessons, as Estes sprinkles throughout Our History Is the Future.
The relationship between oppression and illegal land seizure that benefits Big Oil and other capital producing projects stem from who Natives have been perceived as not being capitalistically-witted, and therefore incapable of being good steward of their own resources: resources that they have been enjoying in bounty before European arrival on Native people's land.
Land renovations at the decimation of the Indigenous population cannot be underestimated. In fact, Estes suggests that the process of settler colonialism depends on capital producing projects, to include degradation of Native resources. And this effort continues to this day.
For example, not too long ago, Nick Estes states: North Dakota's Governor Jack Dalrymple declared a state of emergency on August 19, 2016, to safeguard the pipeline (DAPL) from the Natives who resisted and objected to the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC).
Capitalism and colonialism in the form of land acquisition allows for the US to have a "prosperous" government by appearing to carry out their greed through state's powers in both private and public spheres.
Estes highlights this when he tells the reader that the Army Corps of Engineers, without Congressional approval, made modifications to the Garrison Dam in order to protect a small white populated town of Williston, North Dakota, which Michael Lawson, historian, asserts "destroyed more Indian land than any single public works projects in the United States."
Estes draws from Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s notion that this form of "abolitionist geography" starts from the homely premises that freedom is a place. When Estes makes this point, he's signaling to the reader that Black people and Native people's life struggles in the US comes at the expense of settler colonialism and capitalism exploits, which is legitimized through laws - like you mentioned earlier, Bryan.
Yet, Estes shows through many struggles, Natives, then and now, persistently protected their families, their homes, and their environment. Perhaps they fought, and still fight so hard, because their generational lands contain their burial sites, where their ancestors rest, where their culture is tied to, where their memories have been shared.
The president himself, Andrew Jackson, viewed Indian Removal as essential to civility. Even as he himself employed uncivil means by which to remove them.
Activism alone will not solve our struggle against settler colonialism and capitalism, Estes shows us this throughout the book. But, it will help us mobilize towards struggling for our collective future, as we envision it, borrowing from the memories passed down from our (Indigenous) ancestors.
I am Marcos "Jr." Espinal and I'm a Study and Struggle book reviewer. I enjoyed sharing this conversation with you both (Paris and Bryan). I want to answer the questions you both asked, your question first Paris:
I believe the title is catchy and provocative for various reasons. For starters, to understand the full scope of settler invasion (colonialism) and capitalism, we must understand where we (Indigenous people) have gone through. It is nothing short of our collective determination to survive that has allowed us to survive.
Bryan, to your question, my parents are from the Dominican Republic. I have mixed blood to include Tiano, as well as from others who inhabited the island. I'm proud of all of who I am, and my ancestors whose blood runs through my veins.
I have a question for you, Paris, and Bryan? If we all agree that we are walking away after reading this book feeling informed, satisfied, and renewed (I'll explain) in Nick Estes' Our History Is the Future, tell me your why, in one sentence, and what you would have liked to have learned more about?
Paris: [laughing] When you say in one sentence, is there a word cap, or may I get grammatically creative?
Jr.: [Sigh] One sentence.
Bryan: I would have wanted to hear more about how the Indian Act shaped the identity and status of mixed marriages. And, I don't believe activism, alone, will help the Natives achieve autonomy, because racism is very much a structural hindrance for them in the US.
Paris: There's a thin mention of settler colonizers killing women and dual spirited people. I wonder were they targeted because they held positions of reference in their communities? And, I believe activism draws from history, so to be able to better understand and discuss it with the perception of hindsight is important in advocating for change presently and moving forward.
Jr.: I'm renewed because I believe love, peace, and (community) prosperity are true radical forms of activism. And, though there are mentions of Black movements, I would have liked to have seen a stronger parallel to the Indigenous movements, like how both suffer under the carceral state, and how that became foundational to US culture.
Paris: Thank you Bryan and Jr. Reading, studying, debating, and pulling at the many threads in this book has been rewarding and community building. Who's going to give our unanimous "why this book should be read" final words? Bryan? Jr.?
Bryan: Let's all give a last word. What drew me in was the Natives' resistance, but this book ties in how we, Natives and nonNatives, can resist through a myriad of ways, even poetry.
Being a poet, I understand the actions and push back from a system that I don't agree with. This book talks about more than one practice of resistance; and, I believe that can be appealing to a large readership.
Jr.: The book is great and easy to read. The concepts are weighty, but the language is relatable.
Paris: Nick Estes's Our History Is the Future is a worthy read because he subtly shows us that history belongs to all of us and can only be discussed and evaluated at a distance.
At the time many Indigenous people were fighting to retain their existence, values, traditions, resources: it wasn't history, because it was their day-to-day lives. Only when we look back, learn from the past, can we better create conditions for our today and tomorrow.
Eric Paris Whitfield is Confounder of Prisoners' Brain Trust, Study and Struggle host, and 2023 graduate from Bard College with his senior thesis entitled: Feminist Theory, NYC Black LGBTQ+ Youth and the Complexities of Intersectionality: Finding Autonomy amid Heteronormalcy and Racism. Currently, he is working on a Masters in Public Humanities.
Bryan Panarella is majoring in math, with a secondary focus in biology. He currently serves as a math mentor and hopes to pursue a career in structural engineering. Bryan is also a member of The Prisoners’ Brain Trust and a published essayist and poet.
Marcos Espinal Jr. is a Dominican American raised in NYC. He is currently studying toward a BA at Bard College. Marcos is an active member of Prisoners Brain Trust and Study And Struggle.