MHA Nation Tribal Chairman Mark Fox, who was born and spent his early years in Minot before moving with his family to Parshall, spoke to the Minot City Council Monday, Nov. 3, in a rare appearance by a tribal official.

Invited to speak by Minot Mayor Mark Jantzer, Fox, in turn, invited the council to the Wednesday, Nov. 26, grand opening of Native Green Grow (NG2), a greenhouse that is proposed to have 412,000 feet of growing space when fully built out.

“This is just phase one. We will do close to 2 million pounds of food annually in that as well,” Fox said.

In Minot, Fox said, the hope is that grocery stores will be stocked with strawberries, cucumbers, lettuce and other produce from the greenhouse, which will grow food year-round in operating on energy from captured natural gas from local oil fields.

Jill Schramm/MDN Minot Mayor Mark Jantzer is wrapped in a quilt gifted by Tribal Chairman Mark Fox, speaking at right, on behalf of MHA Nation during the Monday, Nov. 3, Minot City Council meeting.

Fox also outlined three upcoming projects at Fort Berthold.

One involves increasing crude storage capacity from 300,000 barrels to between 3-5 million barrels to allow oil to be held longer during times of low prices, smoothing out market volatility.

A second project would capture and pipe liquid natural gas “LNG” to the West Coast for shipment to Japan, Korea, the Philippines and other countries that want to buy LNGs, Fox said.

“We’ve been working on it for about eight, nine years, and we’re starting to see some daylight to get it – more likely – into Canada, across and over and then sell to foreign markets,” he said.

A third project is to capture gas that otherwise would be flared and use it to generate power for a data center.

“The big advantage we’ve got is we’ve got the land, a 23 million-acre-feet lake and the coldest weather on record in the state of North Dakota,” he said, citing the 1936 record of -60 in Parshall. The cold temperatures and water are ideal for cooling data centers that heat up from energy use.

Fox also spoke about the history of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes, which saw vast acreages taken away by the U.S. government and population decimation from disease.

Today, the tribe has more than a million acres of reservation land and nearly 17,700 enrolled members, of which around 6,000 live on Fort Berthold. An agricultural community throughout its history, it added gaming with the construction of the 4 Bears Casino in 1992, Fox said.

A second casino, Son of Star, is set to open next spring in White Shield.

Oil activity has had a major impact on the economy in recent years.

“We currently produce nearly 3% of all crude in the United States. Some people may think that’s a small number, but it’s really a lot when you talk about a small area in the United States,” Fox said.

He spoke about new schools built in recent years, including a new high school in Twin Buttes scheduled for completion in less than a year. New community centers have been built across the reservation, and new health care centers and addiction recovery facilities and programs have been added.

“We do need to build a higher level nursing home,” Fox said, “and eventually build a hospital.”

Fox highlighted numerous efforts to enhance tourism, with the Affiliated Tribes National Park, a new fairgrounds, earth lodges, rodeos and destination resort at 4 Bears. He noted tourism is just one more addition to the economic reverberation coming from Fort Berthold.

A study, already 11 years old, showed at that time that activities at Fort Berthold left a nearly $3 billion impact on the state’s economy, Fox said. That number would be higher now, and Fox added much of the impact has been felt in Minot because of its place as a regional trade center.