January 25, 2020 – The Oak Lake Writers' Society (Society) today announced that they will receive a $5,000 donation this year from Lakota author and scholar Nick Estes. A second donation will follow later this year.
“What’s problematic about contemporary history on indigenous people is that it’s often written solely from the perspective of non-indigenous people, interpreting our histories to us,” says Estes. “Oak Lake offers a tribal perspective that should be at the forefront of these conversations.”
Estes, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico, generously donated the royalties from his award-winning book Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance.
Estes will make a second donation to the Society later this year. He also intends to donate a portion of the royalties from his latest book Stand with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement, which he co-edited with Jaskiran Dhillon.
These two donations will support the Society’s mission of preserving and defending Oceti Sakowin Oyate (Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota) cultures, oral traditions, and histories. Established in 1993, the Society is a supportive community of more than 30 Oceti Sakowin writers and scholars committed to perpetuating Dakota, Lakota and Nakota cultures and literatures through the development of culture-based writing.
Every summer, the Society hosts an annual writing retreat that encourages Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota writers to gather together to network, share, and strategize their writing projects. These retreats provide an intellectual and creative space for Oceti Sakowin writers to explore and express issues and ideas relevant to their tribal communities.
From these annual retreats, Society members have originated and published six volumes as well as numerous individual writing and education projects that directly challenge the many stereotypes and myths that have negatively impacted the Oceti Sakowin.
The Oak Lake Writers’ Society organizes literary efforts for the purposes of preserving and defending Oceti Sakowin (Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota) cultures, oral traditions, and histories; to reaffirm our peoples’ political statuses; and to regulate and transform representations of such that are inaccurate and damaging. To those ends, we create, research, review, publish, present, and promote works in various genres in a manner that will bring about a greater understanding of our cultures, legacies, and lands. To learn more about the Society, please visit their website: https://olws.squarespace.com