About the Event

One Book, One ND book event with Authors David Correia, Melanie Yazzie, Nick Estes, and Jennifer Nez Denetdale

One Book One North Dakota is a statewide book club that features best-selling authors in a 60-minute webinar. Attendees are encouraged to participate in a Q&A with the author.

Sunday, Jan 22, 2023

4-5 pm CST

Red Nation Rising

Red Nation Rising is the first book ever to investigate and explain the violent dynamics of bordertowns. Bordertowns are white-dominated towns and cities that operate according to the same political and spatial logics as all other American towns and cities. The difference is that these settlements get their name from their location at the borders of current-day reservation boundaries, which separates the territory of sovereign Native nations from lands claimed by the United States.

Bordertowns came into existence when the first US military forts and trading posts were strategically placed along expanding imperial frontiers to extinguish indigenous resistance and incorporate captured indigenous territories into the burgeoning nation-state. To this day, the US settler state continues to wage violence on Native life and land in these spaces out of desperation to eliminate the threat of Native presence and complete its vision of national consolidation “from sea to shining sea.” This explains why some of the most important Native-led rebellions in US history originated in bordertowns and why they are zones of ongoing confrontation between Native nations and their colonial occupier, the United States.

Despite this rich and important history of political and material struggle, little has been written about bordertowns. Red Nation Rising marks the first effort to tell these entangled histories and inspire a new generation of Native freedom fighters to return to bordertowns as key front lines in the long struggle for Native liberation from US colonial control. This book is a manual for navigating the extreme violence that Native people experience in reservation bordertowns and a manifesto for indigenous liberation that builds on long traditions of Native resistance to bordertown violence.

David Correia is a Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of "An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents over Three Centuries" (Haymarket Books, 2022), "Properties of Violence: Law and Land Grant Struggle in Northern New Mexico" (Georgia, 2013), co-author of "Police: A Field Guide" (Verso, 2018 and a Revised Edition, 2022) and "Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation" (PM Press, 2021), and co-editor of "Violent Order: Essays on the Nature of Police" (Haymarket Books, 2021). He is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and an H.B. du Pont Research Fellowship.

Melanie Yazzie (Diné) is Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and coauthor of Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation and The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save the Earth, both of which came out in 2021. She co-hosts and produces the podcast Red Power Hour and serves as lead editor for the open access journal Decolonization. She organizes with The Red Nation, a grassroots Native-run organization committed to the liberation of Indigenous people from colonialism and capitalism.

Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. With Melanie K. Yazzie, Jennifer Denetdale, and David Correia, he coauthored Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown (PM, 2021). He is the author of award-winning book Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019). With Jaskiran Dhillon, he co-edited Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement (University of Minnesota Press, 2019). Estes is the recipient of multiple awards and fellowships including the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Non-Fiction, the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Fellowship, and the American Democracy Fellowship at Harvard University. He is also an award-winning journalist who has written for High Country News, NBC News, Indian Country Today, The Guardian, The Intercept, The Nation, and The Baffler. Estes is a co-founder of The Red Nation, co-host of The Red Nation Podcast, and lead editor for Red Media.

Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Diné) is a professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico who teaches courses in critical indigenous studies, indigenous gender and sexuality, and Navajo studies. She is a strong advocate for Native peoples and serves as chair of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission. She is the author of Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita.

Moderator Antonia Gonzales is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and Journalism from the University of New Mexico and minored in Native American Studies. Antonia is a longtime Native radio producer and host. She is the creator of an awarding winning annual radio special focused on Alaska Native issues, and recently created a Climate News Desk. Antonia is a television contributor to New Mexico In Focus and Native Report. Her television stories have been honored by the Native American Journalists Association for special series, segments and general excellence in beat reporting-all on Indigenous topics. She co-anchored the first Native Vote 2018 Election Night Live, which was a five-hour television broadcast. Antonia is also a mentor encouraging Native youth to pursue broadcast journalism. She has a number of radio awards and fellowships. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband and sons.

One Book, One ND events are sponsored by the Paris Family Foundation and Prairie Public 

HND Value Statement

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this {article, book, exhibition, film, program, database, report, Web resource}, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota. However, in an increasingly polarized world, we at Humanities North Dakota believe that being open-minded is necessary to thinking critically and rationally. Therefore, our programs and classes reflect our own open-mindedness in the inquiry, seeking, and acquiring of scholars to speak at our events and teach classes for our Public University. To that end, we encourage our participants to join us in stepping outside our comfort zones and considering other perspectives and ideas by being open-minded while attending HND events featuring scholars who hold a variety of opinions, some being opposite of our own held beliefs.

Humanities North Dakota classes and events are funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities