"These states have contentious relations with tribal nations to begin with, right? We didn’t sign treaties with the state governments, but yet the state governments participate in the continued criminalization of indigenous people for trying to uphold our treaty rights. And so, why are we criminals, you know, and activists, who are just trying to protect land and water? And when we go back to the treaties, in like the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which the Keystone XL pipeline contravenes and trespasses through treaty-protected territory of the Great Sioux Reservation, we’re not asking the state of South Dakota to do anything radical. We’re not asking nonindigenous people to do anything radical. All we’re asking them to do is to uphold their own Constitution. Your government signed the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty with us. It’s your responsibility to uphold that treaty, as well. And, you know, your own Constitution says that treaties are the supreme law of the land."
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Academics from the United StatesJournalists from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesNative American activists
Original Language: English
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Interview with Democracy Now (March 2019)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nick_Estes
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Nick Estes
Nick Estes is an Indigenous organizer, journalist, and historian. He has cofounded The Red Nation and Red Media. In 2019 he was awarded the Lannan Literary Award Fellowship for nonfiction, and in 2020 he was honored as the Marguerite Casey Foundation's freedom scholar. He was previously an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, but is a faculty member at the University of Minnesota as of 2022.
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