NEW TOWN — The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation (MHA Nation) said the Department of the Interior’s announced a decision on Friday to uphold the MHA Nation’s ownership of the Missouri Riverbed within the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Interior Solicitor Robert Anderson issued a new M-Opinion in favor of the tribe and its longstanding property rights.

“We are pleased the federal government has chosen to follow the law and once again reaffirm the MHA Nation’s ownership of the Missouri riverbed within the Fort Berthold Reservation. The Department of Interior has now corrected the grave injustice caused by the Jorjani Opinion and restored the federal government’s long-standing recognition that the Missouri riverbed within the Fort Berthold Reservation belongs to the MHA Nation. We look forward to working with the Department of Interior to implement Solicitor Anderson’s Opinion and to protect the MHA Nation’s historic rights to the Missouri riverbed,” said Mark Fox, chairman of the MHA Nation.

For thousands of years, the Missouri Riverbed, on what is now the Fort Berthold Reservation, belonged to the MHA Nation. These rights have continually been upheld through legal precedent including the 1825 and 1851 Treaties, subsequent Executive Orders, a

binding decision by Interior’s Board of Land Appeals in 1979, and Solicitor legal opinions in 1936 and 2017.

In 2020, former Solicitor Daniel Jorjani issued an outlier opinion that illegally sought to take away the MHA Nation’s ownership and to wrongfully award the property to the State of North Dakota, according to tribal officials. The Jorjani opinion spuriously upended the long-standing legal status quo and MHA Nation filed two federal lawsuits in Washington, D.C. to protect its legitimate property interests.