This chapter locates a throughline of Indigenous resistance to settler dominance that stretches from the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth to the 2016 NoDAPL movement on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. It is a throughline marked not by warfare and violence, but by diplomacy and strategic action founded in traditional Indigenous responses to the irresponsible use of power. Recognizing how Native peoples, across many cultures and regions, were philosophically aligned toward hospitality and peaceful conflict resolution, disrupts racist notions of savagery, and age-old assumptions of Indigenous peoples as strictly “warrior societies.” By highlighting a number of diplomatic practices and actions occurring between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, this chapter suggests the type of movement that took place at Standing Rock, founded in respect for the environment and peaceful resistance to uncivil government, was not a modern-day innovation, but a series of responses in keeping with the long-standing praxis of Indigenous communities.

This chapter explores the link between Indigenous resistance and memory and looks at the potential for alliances. I begin with Simon Ortiz’s Fight Back, written in commemoration of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt against Spanish imperialism. Fight Back asserts that memory is essential to contemporary resistance by reclaiming the history of the Revolt and restoring this memory to the people. I bring Chela Sandoval’s concept of“coalitional consciousness” into dialogue with Fight Back to show how Ortiz countermaps the landscape, offering a model for contemporary alliances. Following Ortiz’s generous vision of alliances between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous allies, I turn to Nick Estes’s description of contemporary solidarity and Indigenous-led coalitions at Standing Rock. Then, in the final part of the chapter, I bring two authors, Kazim Ali and Rita Wong, into dialogue to think through the responsibilities of alliance.