Historians From The United States

"Long before the civil war tore Russia apart, the challenges of holding such a huge country together, against threats without and centrifugal forces within, had been handled with widespread oppression as well as tight control from the top."

"As in all despotisms, power rested upon violence. In the eyes of the regime, Russian citizens were either loyal subjects who knelt to the ground when the czar passed or deadly enemies most likely bent on assassination. The idea of a space in between barely existed. Over the centuries, five czars were indeed stabbed, strangled, shot, or otherwise assassinated, as were several grand dukes and other high officials."

"Outlying areas of the old Russian empire took advantage of the Red-White struggle to battle for independence. Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states did so successfully, Ukraine unsuccessfully. The fighting in the latter, among Reds, Whites, and several rival Ukrainian forces, convulsed cities in the headlines today: Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mariupol."

"Although mortal, existential enemies, both Reds and Whites were united on one point: They wanted the boundaries of the Russia they hoped to control to be as wide as possible. Both sides had little but hatred for these non-Russian independence movements, especially the one in Ukraine, a land so rich in grain, iron, and coal."

"The movement's other great achievement is this. Among its supporters, it kept alive a tradition, a way of seeing the world, a human capacity for outrage at pain inflicted on another human being, no matter whether that pain is inflicted on someone of another color, in another country, at another end of the earth."

"In the Soviet Union, for example, shooting or jailing political opponents at first helped the Communist Party and then Josef Stalin gain absolute power. But after there were no visible opponents left, seven million more people were executed, and many millions more died in the far-flung camps of the gulag."

"It is impossible to watch Vladimir Putin's arrogant invasion of Ukraine without being appalled by its savagery. Dead men and women strewn on the streets of Bucha, hands bound behind their backs. Russian soldiers raping women, sometimes in front of husbands or children. Russians seizing loot of every size, from cellphones to giant John Deere wheat-harvesting combines. And, again and again, testimony about torture: beatings, electric shocks, near suffocation with plastic bags."

"Nick Estes is a forceful writer whose work reflects the defiant spirit of the #NoDAPL movement."

"Estes continues in the legacy of his ancestors, from Black Elk to Vine Deloria: he turns Indigenous history right-side up as a story of self-defense against settler invasion."

"[T]o fight a complex, mechanized war, a disciplined army responsible to a central command is far more effective than a range of militias reporting to a crazy quilt of political parties and trade unions."

"I realized something else about the terror in the Congo and the controversy that came to surround it. It was the first major international atrocity scandal in the age of the telegraph and the camera. In its mixture of bloodshed on an industrial scale, royalty, sex, the power of celebrity, and rival lobbying media campaigns in half a dozen countries, it seemed strikingly close to our own time. (Introduction, page 4)"

"His books include Our History Is the Future, which tells the history of Indigenous resistance over two centuries, offering a road map for collective liberation and a guide to fighting life-threatening climate change."

"Before the U.S.S.R.'s collapse, in 1991, its rulers portrayed that war starkly: The Whites were evil reactionaries who tried to delay the glorious triumph of Soviet rule. But Putin, whose passion is for empire, not communism, has a different view. He would love to restore the power of both czarist Russia and the Soviet Union, which extended over territory far larger than his own shrunken Russia of today."

"Our History Is the Future establishes Nick Estes as one of the leading scholars of our time."

"From the colonial era, the major legacy Europe left to Africa was not democracy as it is practiced today in countries like England, France, and Belgium; it was authoritarian rule and plunder."

"Furthermore, unlike many other great predators of history, from Genghis Khan to the Spanish conquistadors, King Leopold II never saw a drop of blood spilled in anger. He never set foot in the Congo. There is something very modern about that, too, as there is about the bomber pilot in the stratosphere, above the clouds, who never hears screams or sees shattered homes or torn flesh.(Introduction, page 4)"

"It is always tempting to believe that a bad system is the fault of one bad man."

"In the American South, there are hundreds of Civil War battle monuments and preserved plantation manor houses for every exhibit that in any way marks the existence of slavery. And yet the world we live in—its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence—is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history."

"This book is a jewel-history and analysis that reads like the best poetry-certain to be a classic work as well as a study guide for continued and accelerated resistance.""

"It’s no coincidence that Indian people are in the same department that manages wildlife and federal lands"

"The first Thanksgiving story is — begins with the Pequot massacre by members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which really marks sort of — in my opinion, marks sort of the mythology of the United States as a settler-colonial country founded on sort of genocide to create, ironically, peace."

"I think when we think about climate change, oftentimes the question of climate change really centers on market-driven solutions, such as, you know, green capitalism, and how do we create markets that sort of incentivize transition to sustainable economies, right? And I think, really, what we’re kind of like beating around the bush is, is that it’s the system of capitalism that led us into this economic crisis to begin with. It’s the sort of designation of certain populations in certain territories as disposable, that has led us into our current epoch of global climate change. And so, when we talk about who’s going to bear the most burden when we transition, you know, out of the carbon economy, it most likely is going to be those populations that have historically been colonized"

"Capitalism is fundamentally a social relation. It’s a profit-driven system, whereas Indigenous sort of ways of relating is one about reciprocity and a mutual sort of respect, not just with the human, but also with the nonhuman world. And we’re undergoing, you know, the sixth mass — sixth massive extinction event, which is caused by not just climate change, but is caused by capitalist sort of systems and the profit-driven sort of motive of our current economic and social system."

"A less democratic regime than czarist Russia would be hard to imagine. Starting in the 17th century, serfdom enslaved a high proportion of the country’s citizens—a system maintained by whips, chains, the threat of separating families and exiling rebels to Siberia, and the massacre of tens of thousands of serfs who staged hundreds of revolts over the years."

"Vladimir Nabokov's father, a democratically minded politician who had been arrested by a Communist Red Guard, managed to escape and flee the country, but not before the family’s cook made him caviar sandwiches for the journey."

"In a nation so deeply xenophobic to begin with, the ultimately victorious Communists never forgot the foreign troops who had tried to strangle their baby in its cradle."

"The first U.S. invasion, which was Lewis and Clark, who came through—who trespassed through our territory and were stopped by our leadership."

"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."

"Instead of doing to settler society what they did to us — genociding, removing, excluding — there’s a capaciousness to Indigenous resistance movements that welcomes in non-Indigenous peoples into our struggle, because that’s our primary strength, is one of relationality, one of making kin"

"There is also a growing alliance with nonindigenous communities who are seeing value in indigenous rights, and specifically treaty rights. And, to me, that is the most hopeful sort of sign of this current resistance movement, is that indigenous rights are at the forefront, because they protect everybody’s rights."

"We can see that settler colonialism in Israel — or, in Palestine, is really an extension of settler colonialism in North America."

"We are challenged not just to imagine, but to demand the emancipation of earth from capital. For the earth to live, capitalism must die."

"Dr. Ruiz has taught me the first rule of service: It is not enough to achieve on one’s own. We must always reach out and help those around us and especially those that come after us."

"Growing up in northwest Florida during the 1960s and 1970s brought lessons about the complications of being a mixed-heritage person, neither black nor white, in the Deep South. In the newly integrated junior high school, African American students sat on one side, white students on the other, and Vicki in the middle. Her position in the social hierarchy was conveyed by anonymous notes slipped into her handbag bearing racial epithets or saying she would be better liked if she claimed to be Italian."

"To my knowledge, there are only seventeen Chicanas with PhDs in history. I am number four. Often we labor alone, subject to "proving" our research and our very presence in the academy. I would like to acknowledge the labors of Louise Kerr, Raquel Casas, Antonia Castañeda, Miroslava Chávez, Deena González, Camille Guerin Gonzáles, Lara Medina, Gloria Miranda, María Montoya, Lorena Oropeza, Cynthia Orozco, Emma Pérez, Naomi Quiñonez, Yolanda Romero, Elizabeth Salas, and Shirlene Soto and to honor the legacies of the late Irene Ledesma and Magdalena Mora."

"Building community is both a legacy and a responsibility. As a storyteller, listener, recorder, and amateur theorist, I am reminded of a passage in Eudora Welty's Becoming a Writer: "Each of us is moving, changing, and with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge.""

"We learn from each other’s stories"

"When I was a child, I learned two types of history-the one at home and the one at school."

"Situating one's politics, indeed one's very life, toward community empowerment was a given among Chicano student activists."

"Successful union organization depends, in large measure, on a sense of solidarity and community among workers."

"I truly feel there is a new language coming about-look at the work of Meridel LeSueur, Sharon Doubiago, Linda Hogan, Alice Walker - it's coming from the women. Something has to be turned around. (1990)"

"Perhaps Meridel Le Sueur's wisest and most comforting words to women of the world are found in a line of a poem of solidarity she composed for the North Vietnamese Women's Union: "It was the bumble bee and the butterfly who survived, not the dinosaur,""

"Feminist writer Patricia Hampl once said of Meridel: "Bedecked with Indian turquoise bracelets and rings, a string of large ominous teeth around her neck, a bright multicolored serape covering her body-this walking heap of archetypal images is not your idea of somebody's grandmother. A grandmother, no; a wise and maybe occasionally avenging ancient goddess, yes.""

"She does recognize who she is, what she is from, and there is no separation. You know, she's been going at it a long time, has faced much opposition, and has kept on talking and speaking in such a beautiful and lyrical voice...She's really had a lot of influence on me in terms of being a woman who speaks as a woman and has been often criticized for it, and in the past she could not get her books published because she kept to her particular viewpoint and was sympathetic to certain unpopular viewpoints."

"Meridel Le Sueur, whose work I cite and discuss, has been an inspiration to generations of women writers. Having known her since I was a child, it is with a special gratitude that I thank her both personally and professionally for her labors."

"Meridel Le Sueur is wonderful. She is still, in my view, a consummate artist, one of the best, most important American writers."

"Some of the best poetry is being written by three American Indian women"

"The whole temper of the world is in a much higher consciousness than I've even seen it-there's a global consciousness. I think we're on the verge of a new humanity if we don't blow it up!"

"Her advice to the women's movement is to avoid male prototypes: "It has to be a collective vision. The time is over entirely for private vision, or private greed. We're entering a new era of the same fate for all.""

"Meridel Le Sueur, the Minnesota writer, interviewed her grandmother, who said, "I've lived all my life trying to suppress these stories of what happened to me, and now you're going to write them." And she did"