Unheralded

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — ‘The Buck Stops Here’ (At The Governor’s Desk)

I’m pretty sure these phone calls have already happened. Rrring! Rrring! “Hello, Governor’s Office, this is Doug Burgum.” “Hello, Governor, this is Bill Peterson over at the State Historical Society. They’re telling me I have to decide if I should sign off on letting the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad tear down its historic bridge over the Missouri River so …


Unheralded

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — Attorneys General — Good Guys And Bad Guys

This article is reprinted from the October 2022  issue of Dakota Country magazine.) OK, I know, I know, I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead. But I’m going to a little, this month, and then I’m going to offer some praise for the living. And no, it’s not dead critters or fish like you’ll read about elsewhere in …


JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — Bad Lands Updates: Drew Wrigley, Meridian Energy Group, Land For Sale

Drew Wrigley: Case Closed As I write this Friday, it has been exactly 10 years and 27 days since four western North Dakota counties — Billings, Slope, McKenzie and Golden Valley — filed a lawsuit to try to get access to section line roads inside four parcels of land being protected by the U.S. Forest Service, the federal agency that …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — Another Not-So-Little Win For The Bad Lands

I’m sitting in my office on a clear, crisp, Saturday morning (I know it’s clear because the sun is shining in my eyes through my office window, and I know it’s cold because I went out looking for three or four days’ issues of the Bismarck Tribune in the snow, to no avail) reading a 17-page decision handed down by …

RUSSELL J. MYHRE: Report From The Rez — It’s A Good Day To Be Indigenous

On Friday, as I prepared to say goodbye to my daughter, Amanda Myhre, and her traveling companion, Kaitlyn Huss, after spending the day at Sacred Stone Camp outside of Cannonball, N.D., and later at the state Capitol in Bismarck, I said, “I only wish your mother had been alive to see this day.” Amanda’s mother, Benedicta “Bennie” Callousleg, a full-blood Lakota …

TOM DAVIES: The Verdict — Ambush At Standing Rock

It’s hard to articulate what has happened and is still happening to the Native American population. North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple, his scout, Drew Wrigley, and his alter-ego, Kevin Cramer, are either disconnected from the reality of what is happening at Standing Rock or are simply too uninformed or too cowardly to act in a responsible leadership role. Philip Strobel …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — The End of the Drew Wrigley Story … For Now

“Then there’s the strange case of Drew Wrigley, the lieutenant governor and, many thought, heir apparent to the office. Wrigley has gotten himself tangled up in a messy personal situation that probably precludes his nomination …” That’s what I wrote a month ago today, on a quiet Tuesday morning, in an article ostensibly about Jack Dalrymple’s performance as governor (you …

NANCY EDMONDS HANSON: After Thought — Keep Your Pants Zipped

Way back when I was a mere news puppy, wise old editors counseled us on all the news that was — and, specifically, wasn’t — fit to print. “Remember that our subscribers read the paper over breakfast,” they’d caution. “The kids are at the table, too.” Those were the words we lived by. Today’s edition of our local daily newspaper …