News

Woman in the red dress

January 9th, 2019

FARGO– Annita Lucchesi began researching the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women with a hand broken from domestic violence. Never before compiled into a single database by any law enforcement agency, her task is daunting, even without the pain.

“I almost became one of the women on this list,” Lucchesi said. “Having escaped domestic violence I felt the responsibility to create this resource. I thought someone was already doing it, there are lots of lists out there, but…

Two bills aim to help state with murdered and missing Indigenous People

January 9th, 2019

BISMARCK– North Dakota’s first Native Congresswoman introduced two bills related to murdered and missing Indigenous people.

Ruth Buffalo, of Fargo, turned in the bills – House Bill 1313 and House Bill 1311 – to require additional training and data collection by law enforcement related to MMIW issues.

Buffalo, a Democrat, and a registered member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation, recently made national headlines after receiving permission from the House minority leader and…

Legislators want Bible classes in public schools

January 8th, 2019

Antique Bibles - photograph by C.S. Hagen

BISMARCK – Reflecting sentiments of the 1920s, state legislators are trying to push a bill that will authorize a Bible class as an “elective instruction” course in public and nonpublic schools.

“The bill calls it being an elective – not an essential studies course – which is two very different things,” Representative Aaron McWilliams, a co-signer from Hillsboro, said. “What the bill doesn’t do – some people look at it and immediately fear that what it does is say that…

Don’t sell your gun and you’re a criminal

January 8th, 2019

Guns on display in Fargo - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO – A licensed retailer refusing to sell a firearm to any legally qualified person should be a crime in North Dakota, or so say a handful of the state’s elected few.

A newly-proposed bill in the North Dakota Sixty-sixth Legislative Assembly currently known as House Bill 1160 plans to enforce penalties on any licensed retailer who refuses to sell another authorized person a firearm. The original bill stated anyone who refuses, but sponsors plan to rewrite the bill.

“A person…

Ethics commission: “symbols of evil”

January 4th, 2019

Ellen Chaffee and Dina Butcher days before Measure 1 passed in North Dakota - photograph by C.S. Hagen

BISMARCK – After repeated attempts at better government transparency over the years, the constitutional initiated Measure 1, now known as Article XIV, which created an Ethics Commission, is now inseparable from law and will be incorporated into the state’s Constitution on January 5.

Opponents may not like the fact that out-of-state lobbyists will be held accountable for buying political favors, but the details will take two legislative sessions to comb through, Senator Tim Mathern,…

Policing for Profit

December 20th, 2018

by Jacques Harvieux
jacquesthejock@gmail.com

For those unfamiliar with civil asset forfeiture, it is the process in which law enforcement officers take assets from a person. These “assets,” range from literal cash to private property such as vehicles, houses, and small possessions. In every case it is a person’s private property being taken by law enforcement.

The property is often taken based upon mere suspicion of said person’s involvement of a crime or illegal activity. What is…

War on women’s health

December 19th, 2018

FARGO – Women’s health is on the frontlines in the war for healthcare dominance. On the side to repeal the Affordable Care Act led by President Donald J. Trump, nearly 70 attempts offering little to no alternatives have been made against current healthcare law.

No attacks succeeded until December 14, when a district court judge in Texas ruled that the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional because Congress eliminated a penalty for those who forgo health insurance. The federal…

One Congressman blocks Savanna’s Act, North Dakotans outraged

December 19th, 2018

Jessica Perez and her son Malachi after signing the letter to Congressman Kevin Cramer urging him to help Savanna's Act pass - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO – While a lone Virginian Congressman blocks passage of Savanna’s Act, people across North Dakota are applying pressure to the state’s representative in Washington, D.C. to help push the bill forward.

On Wednesday, dozens of concerned people in Fargo, Minot, Bismarck, and Grand Forks contacted the office of current Congressman Kevin Cramer to demand his verbal support to push the act through the U.S. House of Representatives. The FM Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women –…

Savanna’s Act passes U.S. Senate

December 7th, 2018

Savanna LaFontaine Greywind - Facebook

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Savanna’s Act passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate on Friday and will move to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill, S. 1942, is named for Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, who was killed by Brooke Lynn Crews on August 19, 2017 during a fetal abduction described during legal proceedings as one of the state’s most “diabolical” acts. Crews’s former live-in boyfriend and accomplice, William…

Is China using a Native American front to build a state-owned oil refinery?

December 5th, 2018

TRENTON – An oil company with deep ties to Chinese state-owned enterprises is attempting to quietly set up a refinery near a historical site in western North Dakota, raising red flags with locals about more than the possibility of water contamination.

According to Williams County Planning and Zoning Application records filed on November 13, 2018, John F. Melk, President of AIC Energy Corporation, a subsidiary of AIC Solutions Group Inc., announced plans to build a bio-diesel oil…

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