Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico, co-founder of The Red Nation and author of "Our History is the Future".
In the book Our History is the Future, Lakota historian Nick Estes shows how two centuries of Indigenous resistance created the movement proclaiming Mni Wiconi or “Water is Life.” This talk grounds the Lakota philosophy of “Mni Wiconi” into a place-based practice of resistance and theory of decolonization from the first Indigenous treaties with the nonhuman nations to the treaties with the United States. According to Lakota interpretations, each treaty guaranteed the protection of nonhuman relations essential for Indigenous survival, such as the buffalo nation and water.
