17: Ruth Buffalo is changing politics in North Dakota

The records of the State Historical Society of North Dakota contain a bland notation of an infrastructure project from almost seventy years ago. They tell us that the Garrison Dam was built by the US government to control flooding, and for continuity of downstream barge traffic. They also mention that strong opposition to this dam came from those who lived on the banks of the Missouri River, primarily American Indians, who were forced to abandon their homes and livelihoods when the waters rose to create Lake Sakakawea. Ruth Buffalo was not alive in 1953, when the decisions of a federal government upended the lives of the Three Affiliated Tribes, also known as the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, on North Dakota’s Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, but what happened has shaped her activism and now a political career that has seen her elected to the North Dakota State Legislature. In this interview with Next Left she recalls the impact of federal decisions that transformed the lives of her family and her community, with the flooding of 94% of the agricultural land the tribes had worked for generations, and the dislocation of Native people from their historical homesteads. Ruth Buffalo’s personal story offers a reminder that the struggles of Native Americans with an indifferent and often destructive federal government are not issues of the past, but of the present. So too does the story of another struggle she’s been involved with, that of the people of Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Ruth Buffalo’s election in 2018 to the state legislature came at a time when the nation’s attention was focused on efforts to suppress the vote of Native Americans in North Dakota. She actually beat the legislator who made it harder to vote, and now she is working to open up the process. She ran for the legislature to put a host of of issues on the agenda: healthcare, education, and human rights. And now she’s having a lot of success in doing so, because as her campaign proudly reminds us, Ruth is in the House.

SHOW NOTES

MMIWG an epidemic in U.S. as well as Canada, says North Dakota legislator CBC Laura Sciarpelletti

Native Students should not have to worry whether they will be allowed to wear eagle feathers and plumes during school-sanctioned events Indian Country Today Ruth Buffalo

Three challenges for Ruth Buffalo: She’s a woman. She’s Native. And she’s a Democrat. Indian Country Today Jourdan Bennett-Begaye

The 2018 Midterms Have Exposed a Democracy in Crisis The Nation John Nichols

Finding Aid: The Garrison Dam and Lake Sakakawea The North Dakota State Historical Society 

Now & Then - Mandaree Singers