Veterans & the lost city of Elbowoods: DSU brings Native American experience to Big Read

Nov. 23--Dickinson State University has brought Native American veterans' experiences into its celebration of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

As part of its National Endowment for the Arts Big Read, DSU showed the Prairie Public documentary "Basketball, Water and the Lost City of Elbowoods," and invited Native American veterans from the MHA Nation to the university for a global table discussion.

The documentary tells the story of a basketball team whose seven Native American players served the country during World War II. Shortly after returning home, the government they had served under flooded their town -- Elbowoods -- after the Garrison dam was built in 1953.

Elbowoods was a small agricultural community located in a bend of the Missouri River. The land that once was Elbowoods is now underneath Lake Sakakawea.

Mark Fox, Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman, is a nephew of one of the basketball players, Sidney Fox. In the documentary, he talks about Elbowoods.

"We were the first farmers of North Dakota -- squash, corn, beans, watermelons -- a number of crops, and we grew them in the fertile bottomlands," he said.

Fox talked about the impact of the flooding.

"You lose not only your home, you lose not only your ability to raise crops, you lose not only a school system that was now thriving ... but if you think about it, when you have to go and dig up your relatives -- those that you can get to -- and rebury them on high grounds, the emotional/spiritual impacts to our people was very devastating," he said.

Bill Hale, Jr.,one of the veterans who came to DSU for the global table discussion, is a Native American former sergeant in the U.S. Army and a son of one of the former residents of that town.

"My grandparents went through it, and my mother went through it, so I was told a lot about what happened ... It's underwater," he said. "It's probably under 50 feet of water, so it's deep. The deepest part of that river is around the bridge (and) is over 90, maybe 100 feet."

After the town was flooded, Hale said, the government relocated many of the town's former residents to big cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago.

"They settled out there, and they raised their families, but what happened was they lost their culture, and they got into main-stream city life," he said.

Not all of Elbowoods residents left the state, and some of those who did returned -- including his parents, who now live in Parshall.

Hale said that there is still a bitterness among some in the MHA Nation for the lost land.

"There's a lot of younger kids (who) really don't know what happened, why they did it. They just learned that the white man flooded our lands, so they're bitter about it," he said.

Despite that part of his family's history, Hale proudly joined the U.S. Army, and he's one of many.

"Right now, we have over 300 veterans who are alive on the Fort Berthold Reservation. Deceased, there's probably 80-100," he said.

Some members of the audience for the global table expressed awe at the fact that so many Native Americans in general have served in the U.S. military, given the U.S. government's often tense relationship with Native communities.

Hale said his culture is a warrior culture and that they hold their veterans in high honor.

"We've always been that warrior society," he said. "It's just been handed down. I want to serve my country. We're very proud ... to serve our country ... (We're) very traditional people. If the grandpa went, then everybody else just followed suit. It was something that we should do as young men, to go to war to fight for our country ... They've always told us that this is our land; we fight for our land and be proud of it, and that's what we did."

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