“We were homestead people. We were gardeners,” said James Moren, a supervisor over the long earth lodges, a historical preservation area that studies and reconstructs traditional homes of the Hidatsa nation. “And we are still here.”

The Mandan and Hidatsa are some of the few Native nations who can say their reservation land is actually a part of the same land they’ve always known. Moren said his people have a long and storied history of farming and settling villages. They didn’t spend their time as nomads chasing buffalo across the plains, an assumption Moren would like outsiders to stop making.

According to Bernadine Young Bird, a faculty member at the Native American Studies and Cultural Center and amateur historian, their main source of food came from the “Three Sisters,” crops of beans, squash and corn. Young Bird also said they were fond of sunflowers.

“All three tribes were agricultural people,” Young Bird said. “We survived on what we had and didn’t need a store.”

Of course, the land and the people in it have changed tremendously over the years. In many ways, Fort Berthold would be unrecognizable to anyone from the olden days. People like Moren and Young Bird are making a conscious effort to preserve what is left of their history and culture and restore what they can, to the best of their abilities.

Young Bird teaches classes on how to cultivate gardens the traditional way. She hopes to preserve the Hidatsa words for their tools and techniques through her teachings. She said few fluent speakers are alive today. And their memories are getting hazy due to decades of discouragement from speaking their mother tongue by the United States government.

The memory of Bernadine Young Bird’s first-grade teacher is seared into her brain. Young Bird remembers her life as a little girl, speaking Hidatsa as a first language at home. She didn’t know a word of English before setting foot in her government-run classroom. She learned to speak English regularly by the end of the year. She doesn’t credit her first-grade teacher for this. She said it was done purely out of survival.

“It wasn’t a choice for us, like, say, for German immigrants,” Young Bird said. “We were persecuted.”

The people here have known many hardships. All three nations began their history separate from one another. Now, they’re blended mostly into a single identity. The Mandan and Hidatsa are native to the Bakken. But the Arikara, once a rival, came to them in an hour of need.

On the run from persecution and literally starving to death, they resorted to boiling their moccasins for nourishment. The Hidatsa took in the Arikara and gave them their own space to recover and thrive. Over time, the three nations naturally consolidated their resources in order to better survive. A series of dire smallpox plagues made this transition into the MHA even more of a requirement than ever before.

Before European colonization began in the Americas, Native American people had little to no immunities from foreign diseases. When the first settlers arrived from across the vast ocean, they brought with them several devastating plagues that would rock the entire native population to its very foundation. Historians estimate up to 112 million Indigenous peoples lived across the American continents before Columbus landed. Most lost their lives when exposed to the flu, measles and smallpox. For the MHA, their hardships especially began with a smallpox epidemic.

While essentially extinct these days thanks to vaccinations, smallpox used to be one of the most deadly diseases known to humanity. Victims would find themselves covered in painful blisters and sores. They would suffer from a fever and vomiting. The disease spreads easily and few survive. Those that do are left with permanent scarring from the sores. At one point, all three tribes found their population depleted down to around 100 people. One of their leaders, Chief Four Bears, became infected with the disease. He knew he was going to die. In order to save his people and avoid spreading the plague, Four Bears took his horse and rode off into the wilderness, never to be seen again. He is immortalized for his heroics with a statue of his likeness overlooking the Missouri River. From a mere 100 or so people, the nations grew their numbers over the years and are back to over 16,000 strong.

“It’s a huge comeback as far as numbers go, but we lost a lot of the culture,” said Charlie Moren, James’ father and a Hidatsa language high school teacher.

Charlie worries his people are in many ways being absorbed by the surrounding American culture. Every year, he finds it harder and harder to get young people engaged in learning the old ways of his people. He also said he knows the more time goes by, the fewer elders there will be to help pass down their stories and traditions.

Once the epidemic came under control, the people began to rebuild. Each nation built their villages closer together and they began to function as a single people in many ways. Historically, the MHA built in lowland areas by the banks of rivers. This protected them from the harsh winds above and it was also where they found the best soil for farming.

This existence abruptly came to an end in the 1950s, when the Army Corps of engineers decided to construct a hydroelectric dam to power the state. The resulting floods drowned villages and forced the MHA people onto the peaks of the rolling Bakken hills.

“My generation was the first to grow up on top,” Charlie said, meaning they were the first to live in a world knowing nothing of the lowland life that had existed through his family for lifetimes upon lifetimes.

That’s how the city of New Town got its name. It’s literally the new town, built after floodwaters from the dam sunk their old homes.

The post Chapter Two: ‘We Were Gardeners’ appeared first on 'We Are Still Here'.

The United States Geological Survey estimates there’s somewhere between 4.4 and 11.2 billion barrels of still-undiscovered oil waiting to be drilled within the Bakken, a 200,000 square mile ancient rock formation between Montana and North Dakota. Companies extracted around 450 million barrels just between 2008 and 2013.

“This doesn’t even look like home anymore,” said Bernadine Young Bird, a New Town local and faculty member at the Native American Studies and Cultural Center.

The oil has always been there. And those interested in the black gold always knew it. The problem was that the rock formation used to be too difficult and too costly for any self-respecting capitalist to justify drilling. So what changed in 2008? In one word: fracking.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process in which a pressurized fluid, composed of a cocktail of water, sand and multiple chemicals, is pumped deep into the earth to crack the ancient stone and release oil trapped within. Once released, the oil can then be gathered up and shipped down the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to Illinois for processing.

Although fracking has existed since the ’40s, it only became affordable and mainstream within the 21st century. Essentially overnight, hundreds of thousands of oil workers descended upon Fort Berthold and began drilling. From 2009 to 2014 alone, an extra 100,000 people descended into the area. “North Dakota led the nation in population growth over the past five years, at 12%, and men have accounted for two-thirds of it,” Pew Research wrote in 2014. Men formed a larger proportion of the North Dakota population than any other state but Alaska.

Landowners leased their property to the oil companies for tens of thousands of dollars a month. For the first time in a long time, real money flowed through the fingers of many Fort Berthold residents. But the newfound wealth didn’t spread evenly.

Those tribal members fortunate enough to find oil underneath their land saw more cash than was at one point ever dreamed possible. They bought nice cars and expensive clothes. You might even see a pristine Hummer pull up to the post office in a town too poor to have a grocery store.

Some people left and bought homes in places warmer and sunnier than North Dakota. For the rest, not much changed. If anything, their situation might’ve gotten worse.

In the beginning, the police force of Fort Berthold had only a handful of squad cars. They were a small town department used to dealing with small town problems. The oil workers, mostly men brought from all over the country and from all walks of life, found themselves making a starting salary of $100,000 a year with nowhere to go and nothing to spend it on. Some used the money to support families back home. Others used it to party like there’s no tomorrow.

Oil workers smoke cigarettes outside New Town’s Teddy’s Residential Suites, a hotel crawling with men from all over the country. Every morning like clockwork, uniformed workers climb onto a company shuttle.

Violent crime rates skyrocketed within the Bakken. Aggravated assaults rose by 70 percent between 2006 and 2012. Residents of these sleepy towns had to think twice now about locking their doors.

From 2006 to 2012, a Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics-funded study found, “the rate of violent victimization known to law enforcement in the Bakken oil-producing region of Montana and North Dakota increased for males and females.”

“The violent victimization rate for males increased by 31%, from 90.2 per 10,000 males in 2006 to 118.0 per 10,000 males in 2012, whereas the comparable rate for females increased by 18%, from 118.1 per 10,000 females in 2006 to 139.8 per 10,000 females in 2012.”

The researchers noted that there were not similar crime spikes in non-Bakken counties in the same region: “Violent victimizations include the offenses of murder, rape and sexual assault, other unlawful sexual contact, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, kidnapping, and intimidation. During this same period, the rate of violent victimization in the non-Bakken counties of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, decreased for males (−10%) and females (−8%). “

In 2015, authorities responded by creating the “Bakken Organized Crime Strike Force.” In a press release, the Department of Justice noted, “The Bakken is a vast swatch of oil-rich land spanning approximately 200,000 square miles from North Dakota to eastern Montana and north to Canada.  It has resulted in dramatic influxes in the population as well as serious crimes, including the importation of pure methamphetamine from Mexico and multi-million dollar fraud and environmental crimes.”

Jeanine Spotted Horse, a mom from Mandaree and worker at the local high school, remembers hearing more and more stories of strange men trying to lure young girls to their car.

“We couldn’t even have our kids play outside,” Spotted Horse said.

The villages of Fort Berthold weren’t prepared for the population explosion that came with the oil boom. A lonely motel and a handful of apartments couldn’t hold back the tidal wave of a housing crisis that hit Fort Berthold during the boom.

Charlie Moren, a Hidatsa language high school teacher, said he saw office space, bowling alleys and movie theaters all get converted to housing units. He wore wide glasses and a cowboy hat and took drags of his cigarette real slow. He bragged how a local food truck named a signature cheeseburger after him.

He said he saw tenants evicted from their apartments, only to see the place put back on the market for triple the rent. Moren said he saw some two-bedroom places listed for $3,000 a month.

“We had rent prices higher than in New York City,” Moren said. He said he receives some oil money from the fracking companies but didn’t say how much. Other tribal members insist they know people getting oil royalty checks exceeding several hundred thousand dollars a month.

Many companies placed their workers in temporary constructed work camps. These “man camps” were everywhere during the boom. Some functioned like a military base, with mess halls and libraries and community centers. Others operated like the setting of an old spaghetti western film, dangerous and full of anarchy.

These days, the man camps have mostly disappeared. But there are still some campers and mobile homes parked near oil sites. One such site sits nestled between a drill site and a dirt parking lot for semi trucks. A nearby sign at an empty and overgrown jungle gym reads “children at play,” the pumps and burning flares of the worksite just a short stroll away.  A red pickup has a “Trump 2016” bumpersticker.

The bulk of the workforce now stays in newly-constructed hotels. Teddy’s stays near full capacity on a regular basis. The building is multiple stories high with a bar and restaurant in the lobby. The place still smells like timber and fresh paint.

Oil workers come and go through the lobby in their bright green reflector jumpsuits with the Calfrac Well Services company logo labeled on the front. They mostly keep to themselves these days.

Most refused to give their names or speak about their jobs. One such worker said his supervisor explicitly warned them not to talk to the reporters staying at Teddy’s under any circumstances. Three oil workers did agree to talk but only without their names.

“You don’t have to go to college, you don’t have to have a high school diploma, and you can make over $100,000 a year,” commented a 19-year-old from Washington State.

“I wouldn’t even take a job under 100k,” joked the eldest as they all laughed together. He claimed the companies don’t all thoroughly check backgrounds of workers, calling some of them “ruffians.”

And that isn’t even to say what happened to the landscape. Before the oil can be pumped to the surface for transport down DAPL, first comes the natural gas. There are two ways to deal with natural gas; you can capture it and process it for energy use, or you can simply burn it off into the air and make room for the oil. The companies at Fort Berthold chose the former. The tribal government helped open the door to them.

The protests around the Dakota Access Pipeline drew national attention and celebrities, but a few miles away, oil dominates the reservation landscape with far less hue and cry or media scrutiny. From the top of a hill outside New Town, you can see metal spires jutting from the earth and spewing fireballs of differing sizes into the atmosphere. At night these flares light up the sky. On many nights you don’t see the stars due to light pollution.

Any night map of the reservation is illuminated with thousands of specs of light. The place looks more like a bustling mid-level American city than a sparsely-populated section of North Dakota littered with oil rigs.

Many locals now fear what the oil is doing to the land around them. Some are scared to eat fish from the rivers or hunt local game. They say the wildlife is gone. What does the after burn of the flares leave floating around in the air for everyone to breath?

“The oil has corrupted the water, the air and the people,” said Lesa Fox, a gas station clerk in Newtown who recently moved back to the reservation after living elsewhere for the last 22 years. She said she plans on leaving again soon.

But what the people consistently said they hated the most from the boom was the semi trucks. Fleets of semis carrying oil, water or supplies came barreling through towns and highways on a regular basis. People died in head-on collisions with trucks taking a sharp turn and going too fast. The road from New Town to Mandaree features multiple crosses near its edge. Each one marking the site where someone met their end.

As far back as 2001, the MHA Nation declared in a resolution that “one of the leading causes of death and injury on the Fort Berthold Reservation each year is traffic accidents.” Some of the traffic was attributed to the casino and economic development.

A 2017 state report says that motor-vehicle crashes are “the leading cause of injury-related death in North Dakota,” and almost half were alcohol-related. However, in 2014, the number of statewide crashes began to recede. From 2008-2014, the state was above the national fatality rate in all but one year.

A state chart shows that fatalities are greater in number in the western area of the state dominated by the Bakken shale. As recently as March 2019, The Bismark Tribune reported that a head-on semi crash led to a fatality on Highway 23 bypass in New Town. Two Arizona people in a pickup, David Wilcox and Taylor Denny, were killed. The semi driver, who was from Montana, was accused of negligent homicide.

The Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute found that “the majority of truck-involved injury crashes occur in the oil region” in North Dakota, according to the Tribune.

“I always used to like driving to Mandaree,” Young Bird said, fumbling her hands over one another. “Now, it’s terrifying.”

The natural beauty of the land is now lost on many a traveler. One must drive white-knuckled down every stretch of road, constantly vigilant for some truck turning a corner and swerving too far or driving too fast.

The roads weren’t even paved in those days. The constant barrage of trucks on the highways kicked up a storm of dust that settled over everything in the area. It was as if the days of the dust bowl had returned.

Spotted Horse, the Mandaree school worker, said she believed the dust made her and her horses sick. Her kids would  come home covered from head-to-toe in a layer of dust. The swimming pool her family put up just before the boom got reduced to an unswimmable brown sludge.

James Phelan, the cultural advisor for his segment of the reservation, hated the semis. He wore a New York Yankees ballcap and drove a large black Chevy pickup truck. While normally quick to make a joke, talk of the semis brought a scowl to his face.

He said he made his own speed bumps and placed them on the roads in town to force trucks to drive slower. And it worked. The companies eventually gave in to the people’s frustrations and agreed to pave the roads. The Mandaree government even set up new laws dictating semi traffic to drive around the town, instead of through it.

The MHA people remain conflicted over what the legacy of the oil should mean to them. On the one hand, the boom brought drugs, crime and pollution to friendly communities where, at one time, everybody knew everybody else. It caused internal conflicts with traditional philosophies about protecting the earth. On the other hand, the oil paved their roads and built new schools and community areas. It lifted people out of poverty with large royalty checks.

Mandaree’s high school doesn’t have its own football field. Every game has to be an away game. Thanks to the oil, it’s scheduled for a multi-million dollar renovation. Families with generations trapped in poverty suddenly found themselves flooded with cash.

Spotted Horse said she doesn’t think the tradeoff was worth it. She has a son who works in the oil industry. Others aren’t so sure.

“People own their own businesses now and can take care of their families,” said James Moren, Charlie’s son and the Long Earth Lodge supervisor.

The post Chapter Three: Silica Valley appeared first on 'We Are Still Here'.

Kateri Mishow

Kateri Mishow would call her father every day. The 22-year-old brunette from Minneapolis enjoyed going out with her friends and traveling. She had a Tweety Bird tattoo on her shoulder and was extremely close to her brother and sister-in-law. The three even lived together for a time. Then one day in late January, 2007, Kateri vanished.

“She was probably 98 pounds soaking wet, but she thought she was invincible,” Said Kathy Mishow, Kateri’s mother.

Kathy said these last 12 years have been mostly a blur. Some days, the pain of a mother missing her daughter is nearly unbearable. She’s retired from her career as a nurse for the University of Minnesota. She spends much of her time at the community center in Little Earth, a Native American neighborhood in Minneapolis.

She said it didn’t really sink in for her that Kateri was missing until her friends began to come over asking for her. Kathy and Ira filed a missing persons report with the Minneapolis Police Department on Jan. 23, 2007. They notified local TV news stations which aired Kateri’s story and urged anyone with information to step up.

Not long after, Kathy got a call from a friend of Kateri’s in jail. He said he overheard two other inmates saying Kateri wasn’t missing, she was in the river. They passed this information along to police, who promised to investigate. After hearing what Kateri’s friend had to say, Ira spent the next two years walking up and down the Mississippi river every day, looking for any signs of a body. He never found anything. And after years of the same daily result, he finally stopped.

Sgt. Hatchner has been the lead investigator on Kateri’s case since the beginning. He declined to comment on the case, citing it as an ongoing investigation. Kateri has been missing for 12 years. There are currently no suspects. Her information is listed on all missing persons pages in a tri-state area.

Kateri’s family has attended a march for the Missing and Murdered Native American Women for the last few years. Kathy said she wants to whatever she can to get Kateri’s name out there. There is a mural on the front wall of the Little Earth Community Center with the names of every Missing and Murdered Native American in Minneapolis. Every person asked in the neighborhood said they knew somebody who’s name is on that wall.

Anyone with information is asked to call MPD at 612-348-2345.

Olivia Lone Bear

Olivia Lone Bear loved her family. She cooked meals for her kids and her dad regularly. Bernadine Young Bird, Olivia’s aunt, remembers she would deliver homemade soup to Bernadine’s mom on the regular.

“What happened to her could happen to anyone,” Young Bird said.

Olivia was last seen on Oct. 25, 2017. She left a bar in New Town driving her oil worker friend’s truck and just disappeared.

Her family assumed something was wrong immediately. Her dad became suspicious when she didn’t come home. They filed a report with the police, asked around and conducted searches on their own. Olivia’s Brother, Matthew, led the operation.

After she’d been missing for four days, her family discovered the police misfiled the report and they had to come down to the station to file a new report.

“We were abandoned right from the beginning,” Young Bird said. She said she doesn’t believe the police took Olivia’s case seriously from the start. Olivia remained missing for nine months.

Folks gathered from around the whole area to look for Olivia. Even some came from out-of-state to help find her. Her family created a facebook page and conducted regular searches.

Olivia’s story gained national attention. Other news organizations flocked to New Town to tell her story.

On July 31, 2018 a private search group came across a truck over 200 feet out in the bottom of a lake. It was the truck Olivia was last seen in. The FBI announced the body recovered in the truck was Olivia’s.

Investigators still haven’t released a cause of death. The FBI declined to comment on what they called an ongoing investigation. “We were shocked, upset and angry,” Young Bird said, the expression on her face never changing.

Susan Poupart

Susan “Suzy” Poupart was a victim of murder and elusive justice.

Her killers have never been charged, prosecuted or convicted of a crime.

Poupart’s remains were found nine months after she went missing from a party on the Lac Du Flambeau reservation in Vilas County, Wisconsin.

The 29-year-old was the mother of two children, who suffered tremendously from her death:

Jared Poupart, who grew up with a grandmother crushed by sadness and Alexandra Poupart, his younger sister who grew up with her aunt and battled – for years before settling down.

Vilas Sheriff Joseph Fath, who picked up Poupart’s case in 2013, said he needs people in the community to come forward if the persons of interest in the case are to ever be charged.’

“There’s people out there that know what happened. I just need them to come forward.”

Alex said she remembered people telling her about how her mother attended American Indian University in New Mexico, was left-handed and an artist.

But those memories have been overshadowed by how long her mother’s murder has gone unsolved.

“I mean it’s, it’s, it’s basically forgotten,” she said. “… but all that pain, it’s still here.”

Both she and Jared look forward to the day when their mother’s memory will be honored.

“She touched so many people in ways that I cannot explain,” he said. “People tell me, she was a good person.”

“The laws don’t protect us,” he said. “The value of an Indian is nothing — and it shows.”

The post Chapter Five: Where are You? appeared first on 'We Are Still Here'.

“We were very self-reliant,” said Bernadine Young Bird, a faculty member at the Native American Studies and Cultural Center and instructor on traditional gardening. “We relied on the skills and knowledge that our people had.”

Young Bird maintains the contemporary gardening methods of her people. She sees this as both a way to reignite her people’s “love and need for gardening” and as a way to bring some food sovereignty to a town filled these days with pizzas and canned goods. Young Bird said the reservation has high rates of diabetes thanks to the “American diet.”

Her people traditionally grew beans, squash and corn. Young Bird called these “the three sisters.” She also likes to grow sunflowers. She maintains her garden in the traditional Hidatsa way with traditional hidatsa tools. Her 85-year-old mother, a fluent speaker in Hidatsa, is helping her record the names and techniques of their people for future generations to appreciate. And she isn’t nearly the only one working to preserve and celebrate the MHA ways.

James Phelan is the cultural advisor for his segment of the reservation. He hosts a sweat lodge several nights a week, or whenever somebody asks him to.

Sweat lodges are Native American ceremonies meant to bring some form of peace to anyone struggling. At least 40 rocks are placed under a roaring fire for hours and hours until they turn red hot. Then, everyone enters the lodge and gathers in a circle around a pit dug in the center. The red-hot stones are brought in one by one until exactly 14 sit glowing in the middle. Someone is chosen to say a prayer for those in the lodge and spread chips of cedar over the rocks. The cedar cracks and sparkles on the rocks and releases a pleasing aroma throughout the tent. Several in the tent then sing traditional Hidatsa songs and splash water over the stones until the tent is thick with steam.

James says the ceremonies take a lot out of him. But he can’t control when someone needs help, and he always wants to be there when needed. He says it also reinforces his spirit. The rocks can’t be used again because they contain celebrants’ toxins. Here, the fire is pure.

He also likes to sing outside the lodge with his friends and in competitions. Phelan and his friends sing Hidatsa songs together for community events and powwows. He said he even sang for the Netflix series “Longmire” in an effort to bring traditional Native American music to mainstream television.

“The beautiful part is our culture,” Phelan said.

James said a big part of their culture is honoring veterans. You can see this when driving through town. Right next to the statue of Chief Four Bears, the MHA’s most honored leader, is a memorial to all MHA tribal members who gave their lives fighting in American wars.

The demographics of Fort Berthold are changing. With the oil came many non-native people from all over the United States. James Moren, a supervisor for the traditional Long Earth Lodges, said he doesn’t mind the influx of new faces “as long as we can get together and have a good time.”

“If you’re going to stay and work, then you’re going to make this place home,” Moren said.

Powwows and ceremonies are held on the regular in Fort Berthold. People from different nations all over the North American continent flock to these powwows, adorned in the ceremonial garb of their nations. Some come to dance. Some come to sing. Many come to socialize and enjoy the show.

“The more you come to the powwow, the more people you know,” said Mary Topsky, a dancer during a memorial powwow for the late singer Kenny Merrick Jr. “I feel really comfortable when I come here.”

Topsky has attended powwows since she was a little girl. She said she considers powwows to be a sort of family gathering.

Not only are there those hard at work to protect and express their Native American culture, but there are also some out there fighting to protect the people. Anita Lucchesi is one such person.

She is the creator and executive director of of the Sovereign Bodies Institute, an organization dedicated to ending sexual violence against Native Americans by empowering communities through data collection.

“When I first started, I knew that it’s going to be my life’s work,” Lucchesi said.

She said she considers it an honor to help bring women “a home” with the community her organization provides after they’ve gone through a traumatic incident.

There are efforts all throughout Fort Berthold to preserve and celebrate where they’ve come from and what they are. They work hard to keep the community strong and will go out of their way to care for another in need.

“Hopefully, you’ll see more of us than just the oil,” Phelan said.

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