What do sanctions against Venezuela have to do with the Dakota Access Pipeline? In this 2022 talk for the Portland chapter of DSA, Dr. Nick Estes (citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) lays out the geopolitical context of land-based indigenous challenges to the fossil fuel industry. He makes the case for not only resistance to racial capitalism as the driving force behind fossil fuels, but also to colonial extractive capitalism that continues with the mining of lithium and copper for green technologies. Estes is the co-founder of Red Nation, an organization dedicated to the liberation of Native people from capitalism and colonialism. He is also Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at University of Minnesota. He's the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019) and Standing with Standing Rock: Voices of the #NoDAPL Movement (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), which was co-edited with Jaskiran Dhillon.
Oceti Sakowin Camp at DAPL protests, Standing Rock. Photo by Becker1999 and licensed under Creative Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camp_red_fawn_%2831046295083%29.jpg
- KBOO