February 23rd, 2018
FARGO – Water sizzles against scorched stones piled in a shallow pit center of Fargo’s only Indigenous sweat lodge. Faces gleam briefly before the glow fades, and the Native songs begin. Packed side by side, Anishinaabe, Spirit Lake, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, and a few wasi’chu – or white people – sing to the four directions, and for guidance in troubled times.
One year after Fargo police pulled Native Americans out of the sweat lodge for what they thought was an…
February 21st, 2018
FARGO – To hundreds of Fargo’s inmates, a C-Note-sized bail might as well be a million dollars. Unaffordable.
On any given day the city’s law enforcement brings those who break the law to jail. It’s their job. Some offenders are violent. Some are entitled to a phone call and an orange wardrobe. Some are drug abusers, addicted. Others are repeat offenders, and then there are those who don’t see jail as any kind of deterrent.
A February 8 snapshot of the Cass County Jail’s…
February 15th, 2018
FARGO – Nearly half of the Walmart employees claiming discrimination from management at the world’s largest retail chain came before Fargo’s Human Relations Commission Thursday, to appeal for help, and the commission answered.
“My sense is that you all feel you are being discriminated against, for your origins or your clothes,” Barry Nelson of the Human Relations Commission said, after four of the women gave their testimonies. “We do not have an enforcement capacity, but I…
February 14th, 2018
FARGO – Native drums reverberated through Downtown Fargo Wednesday when more than 200 people marched to bring awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women, an epidemic that plagues the state and the nation.
Native Americans, tribal dignitaries, Fargo city commissioners, even the mayor showed up to support the cause. Valentines Day is now also proclaimed Missing Indigenous Women’s day by Fargo’s Native American Commission. Passing cars honked in support as the marchers passed.…
February 7th, 2018
FARGO – Twenty Walmart employees blame concentrated racist and prejudicial managerial practices for their sudden firings or dwindling losses in hours and pay.
Those who say they’re affected, most originally from Somalia or Kenya, say there are more former refugees and immigrants afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs in the Fargo area, who are being discriminated against because of the color of their skin, or because they wear hijabs. A hijab is the traditional head…
February 6th, 2018
CAVALIER – From the day Michael Foster plotted his course to turn off the Keystone Pipeline, he knew prison was a possibility. On Tuesday morning the activist was taken into custody after a North Dakota judge sentenced him to three years imprisonment with two years suspended.
The state’s prosecution wanted to make an example out of Foster to deter future instances, and recommended a sentence of five years imprisonment and three years suspended for Foster. The prosecution, which…
February 2nd, 2018
FARGO – Minutes before the judge sentenced Brooke Lynn Crews to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the killer spoke, apologizing for her actions.
“I wish I could take their pain, there is no excuse,” Crews said. “I deserve every year I get, and I know it doesn’t help.”
Crews was describing the pain of Savanna LaFontaine Greywind’s family, and for one of Fargo’s daughters she killed, and for the infant she stole from Savanna’s womb while she was eight…
January 31st, 2018
FARGO – Beneath Heidi Heitkamp’s political savvy is a creative activist, one who never takes no for an answer. She once lined the state capitol with tiny shoes to raise awareness of child abuse, and cut her political teeth on the Equal Rights Amendment.
It’s not the state’s first elected female U.S. senator’s job to follow her party line, but to represent the predominantly red state in Washington D.C.
She is, at her core, an arbitrator, a political referee in a divided nation,…
January 31st, 2018
WASHINGTON D.C. – While North Dakota’s chosen elected announced who they were taking to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech, media across the state kept one piece of information about Congressman Kevin Cramer’s guest quiet.
Cramer, R-ND, the state’s only Congressman, announced he would bring Tommy Fisher, president and CEO of Fisher Industries. Fisher Industries, or Fisher Sand & Gravel Company, in southwestern North Dakota, is one of six companies given a…
January 31st, 2018
State Representative Josh Boschee, District 44, Fargo, announced his candidacy for the ND Democratic-NPL endorsement for Secretary of State on January 30. Boschee has served in the state legislature since 2013. He is a member of the Administrative Rules Committee, the Government Finance Committee, and the Workers' Compensation Review Committee.
Fargo businessman Brandon Medenwald and Paula Thomas announced their intentions to seek Democratic endorsements for the North Dakota State House…
By Josette Ciceronunapologeticallyanxiousme@gmail.com What does it mean to truly live in a community —or should I say, among community? It’s a question I have been wrestling with since I moved to Fargo-Moorhead in February 2022.…