Garrison dam plus#

So too was the Winters Doctrine, a Supreme Court ruling that Indians have inherent rights to water resources on their lands. Tribal sovereignty and treaty rights, including the Yankton Treaty of 1858, were completely ignored. The Army Corps of Engineers handled negotiations. Three hundred families totaling 1,700 people-80 percent of the tribe’s population at the time-were forcibly relocated. Sure enough, the Three Affiliated Tribes gave up 156,000 acres, the most fertile part of their lands, and their clinic. We will lose our homes, our communities, our economy, our resources.” The next year, tribal councilman Mark Mahto told the House Appropriations Committee: “The quickest and most merciful way to exterminate the three tribes is by mass execution, like they did to the Jews in Germany,” recounted VanDevelder in his book, “Everything will be lost if Garrison is built. The Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan of the Three Affiliated Tribes at Fort Berthold suffered most. The losses also included spiritual ties to the land and the intangible benefits that came from living along the Missouri River. Nor were they allowed irrigation development or royalty rights on all subsurface minerals within the reservoir area. The final arrangement denied the tribes the right to graze, fish, hunt, or otherwise use the reservoir shoreline. As a consequence, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service offices were moved to Pierre, making it far more difficult for the Indians they were supposed to serve to use them.

In the case of Fort Thompson on the Crow Creek Reservation, an entire town was inundated.

Garrison dam plus#

The tribes didn't lose only their land, but also any timber, wildlife, and native plants, plus homes and ranches. Besides the Yankton Reservation, fertile bottomland was condemned on reservations at Fort Berthold, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Lower Brule, Crow Creek, and Santee. The construction and consequent flooding forced the relocation of thousands of indigenous people on seven reservations. The Yanktons weren’t the only Native people who lost land and pieces of their culture to the dams. Right now the future doesn't look too good to us.' With a few scratches of the pen, we will sell the best part of our reservation. He said at the time, 'We will sign this contract with a heavy heart. That’s Secretary of the Interior Julius Krug writing his name while tribal chairman George Gillette sobs into his hand. (Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara) sign the Garrison Dam agreement on May 20, 1948. officials and representatives of the Three Affiliated Tribes That dam and four others built along the Missouri River by the Army Corps of Engineers from then until 1966 were approved for flood control, pollution and sediment control, navigation, conservation, recreation, hydroelectric power, and enhancement of fish and wildlife under the Pick–Sloan Missouri Basin Program, a part of the Flood Control Act of 1944. government in 1946 took land from the Yankton Sioux Tribe. To build the Fort Randall Dam and Reservoir in southeastern South Dakota, the U.S. A section of the Garrison Dam in North Dakota, the fifth-largest earthen dam in the world.