Tribal Chairman Mark Fox says the greenhouse will provide food locally, as well as to tribes in neighboring states and to isolated and impoverished areas.
By Jack Dura, Associated PressThis aerial photo shows the first phase of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation's Native Green Grow greenhouse operation on May 15, 2024, near Parshall, N.D. The greenhouse is planned for growing large quantities of leafy greens and vine crops for exports, distribution on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, to other tribes in neighboring states and food banks for isolated and impoverished areas.
“We’re the first farmers of this land,” Tribal Chairman Mark Fox said. “We once were part of an aboriginal trade center for thousands and thousands of years because we grew crops — corn, beans, squash, watermelons — all these things at massive levels, so all the tribes depended on us greatly as part of the aboriginal trade system.”
Getting fresh produce has long been a challenge in the area of western North Dakota where the tribe is based, on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The rolling, rugged landscape — split by Lake Sakakawea — is a long drive from the state’s biggest cities, Bismarck and Fargo.That isolation makes the greenhouses all the more important, as they will enable the tribe to provide food to the roughly 8,300 people on the Fort Berthold reservation and to reservations elsewhere.
“We have always been a very independent, sovereign people that have been able to hunt, gather, grow and feed ourselves, and forces have intervened over the last century that have disrupted those independent food resources, and it made it very challenging. But the desire and goal has always been there,” said Thompson, whose tribal affiliation is Cheyenne River Sioux.
Flaring, in which natural gas is burned off from pipes that emerge from the ground, has been a longtime issue in the No. 3 oil-producing state.
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