At the jail, a clerk directed me to a back room, where a row of stiff plastic chairs faced what looked like pay phones with video screens. A tattoo of a galloping horse covered the left side of her neck. In photos that I’d seen she was striking, with a steady gaze, a sweep of black hair, and a closed-mouth smile that suggested she knew something others didn’t. In Indian country, including much of North Dakota, this pattern is all too familiar.įallis is a member of the Oglala, one of seven bands of the Lakota Sioux. Her name is Red Fawn Fallis, and her 2016 arrest was the kind of dramatic incident that splashes across the media and is replaced just as quickly-a story of limited interest to most people, but a crisis for those affected by it. On a July morning in 2018, I drove there to interview a prisoner whose story is uniquely American, though perhaps not in the way many North Dakotans like to think of the word. The Burleigh Morton County Detention Center, a concrete complex next to a field of heat-withered grass, flies the flag, too. Many trucks and Harley-Davidsons cruising the city’s streets are emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes.
The descendants of white pioneers now spend their days in Bismarck’s banks and office buildings, pool halls and bingo parlors, Chinese buffets and five-and-dimes. The monument represents the settlers who built lives on the banks of the Missouri River after staking their claim to land occupied for centuries by the Mandan Indian tribe. A mother cradles a baby, a son leans against a wagon wheel, and a father peers into the distance. Design updated in 2021.Ī statue of a pioneer family stands in front of the state capitol building in Bismarck, North Dakota. Her first book, The Heart Is a Shifting Sea, a study of love and marriage in contemporary Mumbai, was published by Harper in 2018. Her work has appeared on PBS NewsHour and in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other publications. Elizabeth Flock is a Peabody and Emmy-nominated journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker who focuses on stories about gender and justice.