Our History Is the Future: Mni Wiconi and the Struggle for Native Liberation Nick Estes University of New Mexico - Main Campus
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository American Studies ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 11-15-2017 Our History is the Future: Mni Wiconi and the Struggle for Native Liberation Nick Estes University of New Mexico - Main Campus Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/amst_etds Part of the American Studies Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Political History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Estes, Nick. "Our History is the Future: Mni Wiconi and the Struggle for Native Liberation." (2017). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/amst_etds/59 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in American Studies ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Nick Estes Candidate American Studies Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Dr. Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Chairperson Dr. David Correia Dr. Alyosha Goldstein Dr. Christina Heatherton i OUR HISTORY IS THE FUTURE: MNI WICONI AND THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIVE LIBERATION BY NICK ESTES B.A., History, University of South Dakota, 2008 M.A., History, University of South Dakota, 2013 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy PhD, American Studies The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December, 2017 ii DEDICATION For the Water Protectors, the Black Snake Killaz, the Land Defenders, the Treaty Councils, the Old Ones, the Good People of the Earth. The Fire of the Seventh Generation is lit and it cannot be put out. We are our ancestors from the before and before and the already forthcoming. We are the ones they prayed for. iii OUR HISTORY IS THE FUTURE: MNI WICONI AND THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIVE LIBERATION by Nick Estes B.A., HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA, 2008 M.A., HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA, 2013 PHD, AMERICAN, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO, 2017 ABSTRACT From April 2016 to February 2017, Indigenous women and youth led a historic struggle to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline from crossing Mni Sose, the Missouri River, and threatening the drinking water of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and millions downstream. Rallied under the banner Mni Wiconi, a Lakota assertion meaning “water is life,” centuries of history converged during the protests. It was about more than an oil pipeline. It was struggle over the meaning of history, the defense of land and water, and the rights of Indigenous peoples to determine their own future. When land and water are taken or destroyed, the past is lost with them and so too is the possibility of a livable future. In this dissertation, I situate multiple archival sources and oral histories to document two centuries of Indigenous resistance against the trespass of settlers, dams, and oil pipelines across the Mni Sose. I develop an alternative intellectual history of the Oceti Sakowin, the Nation of the Seven Council Fires, the Lakota-, Dakota-, and Nakota-speaking peoples, from the nineteenth century to the present. This story begins with the trespass of Lewis and Clark in 1804 and the arrival of the US on the Missouri. I document the drastic changes brought to the land, the water, and the people during mid-nineteenth century Indian wars and the mid-twentieth century iv damming of the Missouri by the Army Corps of Engineers. I also tell the story of Indigenous resistance, Red Power, the rise of Indigenous internationalism, and the creation of the International Indian Treaty Council at Standing Rock in 1974 to bring world attention to these issues. It was at Standing Rock where histories of resistance converged against the Dakota Access Pipeline and gained international appeal. Clearly, Oceti Sakowin history resonates with the international community today. Such resonance, I argue, has broader implications than what could be considered just “Indigenous” issues and has universal appeal, while also remaining firmly grounded in history and place. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: SIEGE 1 CHAPTER 2: EMERGENCE 37 CHAPTER 3: WAR 68 CHAPTER 4: FLOOD 125 CHAPTER 5: RED POWER 176 CHAPTER 6: INTERNATIONALISM 211 CHAPTER 7: LIBERATION 273 BIBLIOGRAPHY 287 vi Chapter 1: The Siege Our water is our single last property that we have for our people. Water is life. Mni Wiconi… We will do whatever we have to do to stop this pipeline [the Dakota Access Pipeline] … North Dakota? Miye, ma Dakota. I am Dakota. Dakota means ‘friend’ and ‘ally.’ This is Dakota Territory. This is treaty territory. This is where you agreed not to come into my territory. We signed the treaty of peace that you would not come here… We will put our best warriors in the front. We are the vanguard. We are Hunkpapa Lakota. That means the horn of the buffalo. That’s who we are. We are protectors of our nation of Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires. Know who we are. We will put forward our young people, our young lawyers who understand the weasel words of the English language, who know one word can mean seven things. We understand the forked tongue that our grandfathers talked about. We know about talking out both sides of your mouth, smiling with one side of your face. We know all about the tricks of the wasicu [the fat-taker, the capitalist] world. Our young people have mastered it. I have mastered your language. I can speak eloquently in the English language. My grandmother taught me. But I also know the genetic psyche, and I also have the collective memory of the damages that have occurred to my people. I will never submit to any pipeline to go through my homeland. Mitakuye Oyasin. — Phyllis Young (Dakota), “Sept 30th DAPL Meeting with SRST,” 20141 This story has a beginning but no end. Phyllis Young, a Hunkpapa elder, long- time member of the American Indian Movement, and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Councilwoman, spoke the above words at a September 30, 2014 Standing Rock Sioux Tribe council meeting with representatives of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). It was a full year before the pipeline permitting process began. She moved skillfully from the long histories of treaty-making, trespass, and the ongoing betrayal of the Oceti Sakowin. Young, other Standing Rock citizens, and elected leadership made their case clear: DAPL shall not pass: not without Standing Rock’s consent, and especially not without the consent of the nations of the Oceti Sakowin, the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota people. 1 Quote from “Sept 30th DAPL Meeting with SRST,” filmed September 2014, YouTube video, 1:08:17, posted by “Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, December 6, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiFNVgsX77s. 1 Indigenous peoples claim the river. More importantly, the river claims them. The Oceti Sakowin call DAPL Zuzeca Sapa, the Black Snake, which came from a prophecy that a monstrous Black Snake would extend across the land threatening all life bringing difficult times that would ultimately unite Indigenous nations. Some of those who came to halt its construction called themselves Black Snake Killaz. The pipeline trespasses through unceded treaty lands and sacred sites, such as burial grounds, and threatens Indigenous water rights. Like many, Phillis Young also recognized the profound cruelty in appropriating the name of her nation, Dakota, for a pipeline, Dakota Access, that imperils the existence of the very people it takes its name from. A rupture from the Dakota Access could contaminate the clean drinking water of the Dakota nation with heavy crude oil. The pipeline crosses the Missouri River just under a mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation boundary and within treaty territory. DAPL representatives seemed unmoved, or possibly annoyed that they had met such strident opposition. Before DAPL representatives were allowed to make their case, Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II calmly reminded them, “Before you get started on the project, we want you to know and understand, we recognize our treaty boundaries [of the] Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 and 1868... Because of that, we oppose a pipeline. We have a standing resolution that was passed in 2012 that opposes any pipeline within that treaty boundary.”2 Billionaire CEO Kelcy Warren of Energy Transfer Partners, the owners of DAPL, would later deny this “discussion,” or any “discussion” with Standing Rock, ever took place. Two years after this first consultation with Standing 2 Ibid. 2 Rock, Warren told The Wallstreet Journal, “I really wish for the Standing Rock Sioux that they had engaged in discussions way before they did. I don’t think we would have been having this discussion if they did… We could have changed the route. It could have been done, but it’s too late.”3 Indigenous sovereignty, treaties, and the invariable threat the pipeline posed to the river, a fresh water source for millions not just Indigenous peoples, mattered little to them. Underneath DAPL’s feigned ambivalence about consent simmered outright contempt that would explode into horrific violence. What stood before them were not the last vestiges of a dying race. What stood before them was a nation that had survived genocide, a nation that was valiantly rejecting the second coming of a failed genocide — the ongoing planetary holocaust we call climate change. Today these words sound like prophecy: “We are protectors of our nation of Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires. Know who we are.” It was a bold refusal to die. Less than two years later a Native-led movement was born under the rallying cry Mni Wiconi — water is life! History would be made.