News

The First Lady’s magic wand

October 2nd, 2019

North Dakota's First Lady Kathryn Helgaas Burgum talking about her experiences with addiction at the Women Connect conference - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO – Amidst a room filled with women, cupcakes, and shared experiences, the state’s First Lady took the stage last week in the Crystal Ball conference room at the Delta Marriott to talk about her passion to rid the stigmas behind addictions.

Kathryn Helgaas-Burgum was once a party girl, she said, blacking out for the first time at Jamestown High School. Later in her professional life she didn’t become a “wine mom,” but more of a “wine girl,” as drinking was the only way…

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​Ruth Anna Buffalo: Woman of the Year

October 2nd, 2019

Ruth Buffalo - wet plate photograph by Shane Balkowitsch

By Lonna Whiting
lonna@lonna.co

“It’s always like this. Always busy,” Ruth Anna Buffalo said during a speaker phone interview while driving a rented cargo van from Bismarck back home to Fargo.

Buffalo, the first Native American Democrat elected to the North Dakota Legislature and a longtime public health advocate, had recently been in Washington, DC, for the Native American Legislators Caucus where she spent time attending roundtable discussions and panels with members of Health and…

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​Citizen undercover

September 24th, 2019

Keith Coates, a certified massage therapist, took it upon himself to investigate human trafficking in area massage parlors - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO – Local men are keeping the trafficking of Chinese sex workers alive in the metro area. From distant Chinese villages, middle-aged women are being circulated across the world through San Gabriel, California and on to Fargo/Moorhead massage parlors.

With promises of happy endings, many of the local Asian massage parlors are offering such special services. The women rarely stay more than half a year before they’re moved to Cyprus, Paris, or back home. Mostly in their 30s, they…

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​‘I have hope’

September 20th, 2019

Penelope Echola leading chants at Fargo's climate strike - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO – Millions of people, young and old, joined a worldwide climate strike Friday to demand their governments end the age of fossil fuels, and Fargo was no exception.

By noon, nearly 200 people waving signs and chanting slogans showed up at City Hall with the event, organized by the Red River Valley Democratic Socialists of America, to City Hall, and voiced their concerns about the inability of government to properly address climate change. Their plan: disrupt business as usual to…

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The North Dakota Salt Lands

September 11th, 2019

Photographs by C.S. Hagen, design by Raul Gomez - photograph by C.S. Hagen

WILEY FIELD, North Dakota – The stench hits first. Invisible and explosive, hydrogen sulfide burns through mucous membranes, leaving a metallic taste on the tongue. Breathe in enough – which isn’t much – and the gas, a byproduct of crude oil, will knock down anyone within two breaths. Death comes in minutes.

With few signs of burning flares on a windy day, the invisible poison has no ground zero in the oilfields of Bottineau County. It can be smelled everywhere between the…

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​North High school shooting threat

September 3rd, 2019

Fargo North High School - school website

FARGO – A school shooting threat written on a student’s desk at North High prompted an investigation and will ensure a heavier police presence at the school on Wednesday.

Fargo North High School Principal Andy Dahlen issued a statement late Tuesday night, saying that during eighth period a student told a teacher about writing on a desk. The teacher then reported the writing to the school administration.

“The following statements were scrawled on a desk: ‘I wan to run away,” and…

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The smaller we are the less likely we are to be profitable

August 28th, 2019

Photograph and design by Raul Gomez

By Carmen Rath-Wald
carmen.rath.wald@ndus.edu

Young Logan County area farmers sat together on a recent Monday night, and talked about Tyson’s closure of its Holcomb, Kansas beef processing facility due to a fire. According to USDA, North Dakota ranks 9th in the top 10 states in the nation with the most beef cows, measuring 985,000 head on January 1. Those at the table background cattle and sell to the finishers.

Beef processing facilities are located in Kansas, Nebraska and Texas and…

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​‘Hatred is born of ignorance: fear is its father, and isolation is its mother’

August 28th, 2019

Christian Picciolini a former violent extremist Nazi now fighting to help them leave speaks with HPR - photograph by Peter Tsai

CHICAGO – A day before the United States President called himself “The Chosen One,” a reformed Nazi predicted Christian fundamentalists view Donald Trump as an end to a means: the Apocalypse.

Violent extremists strive for RaHoWa, or a racial holy war, while Christian fundamentalists pray for the “Second Coming,” with rivers of blood, dead walking the earth, a time when all will be judged. The difference between white supremacists and religious fundamentalists boils down to…

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​ND’s petroleum spill could be U.S.’s largest land spill

August 20th, 2019

1 million gallon brine spill from Crestwood's Arrow Pipeline on July 8, 2014 - photograph by Sarah Christianson and provided by the Dakota Resource Council

WATFORD CITY – A reported 10-gallon spill of liquid gold at the Garden Creek I Gas Processing Plant in 2015 – just before the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy – could now be renamed as the largest land spill in human history.

The plant, operated by Oklahoma company, ONEOK Partners, reported 10 gallons of condensate or liquid natural gas spilled, but the accident, which occurred over a long duration of time, was underreported, Bill Suess, the spill investigation program manager…

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​Vandals using the Aryan Nations symbol hit statue of Viking hero

August 17th, 2019

Rollo the Viking statue - photograph by Sabrina Hornung

FARGO – First, Lady Liberty was kidnapped in July. Then on Friday, the statue of Rollo the Viking, or Rollon in French, was vandalized with what is apparently white supremacist graffiti.

There are no connections between the two acts of vandalism, according to police, but investigators are taking the crimes seriously.

The statue of Rollo the Viking, one of Fargo’s oldest originally placed west of the Great Northern Depot on Broadway, was one of two copies of the original 1863 works…

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