History for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara
September 5, 20206
Reprinted from https://www.mhanation.com/history
Relocation from the bottomlands
Within a few years the Three Tribe's members were obliged to move to new homes. Relocation and salvage procedures established by the Corps proved unsatisfactory. Private movers contracted by the army were unreliable, and tribal members were denied permission to cut most of their timber prior to inundation. Flooding of the bottom lands rendered the residual reservation useless. Settlement payments were too low to provide full reestablishment of most families. The uprooting of kinship and other primary groups destroyed the community life so fundamental to the Indians' culture. Farms and ranches were liquidated, unemployment rose as high as 70 percent, and many tribal members were driven to a life of despair in nearby urban centers.
Millions of dollars in federal funds were pumped into the reservation to counteract social and economic damages. After a generation of hard work the tribes began to show signs of recovery, but psychic scars from the ordeal remained evident today. (Lawson, p.61-62). The tribal members' concern was to find sites for wells in the area to which most of them were going to move. In April, 1950 actual test drilling began. By September 27, wells had been drilled in the Western Segment, and possible home sites were being selected.
Present Day
The Fort Berthold Agency, formerly situated at Elbowoods until 1953 when it was flooded by the Garrison Dam, is now located in New Town. The reservation lies on both sides of the Missouri, including parts of Dunn, McKenzie, McLean, and Mountrail counties. The seat of tribal government for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation lies four miles west of New Town.
The Four Bears Area includes the tribal administration building, Indian Health Services Clinic and Dialysis Unit, Casey Family Program, Ft. Berthold Day Care, KMHA Radio Station, MHA Times (tribal newspaper), and the Three Affiliated Tribes Museum. This complex is directly adjacent to the tribe's Four Bears Casino, Lodge, and Recreational Park.
Today, the Three Affiliated Tribes, as a governmental entity, administers many governmental, economic, health, welfare, and educational programs. Located in the Four Bears Complex area, the tribal administration operates in a modern complex of business offices. Revenues are generated primarily from various Government enterprises, programs and grants. From this location, The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, the Three Affiliated Tribes, carry out their sovereign responsibility of governance of the reservation and its people. Although federal government policy and various Supreme Court decisions from the early 1960's to the mid-1980's reflected a period of acknowledgment and support tribal sovereignty , as tribal nations practice and assert their sovereign rights, the mood of Congress and the courts have forced the pendulum to move in a direction that seeks to limit the powers of tribal nations.
Reprinted from https://www.mhanation.com/history