Transportation has always had a significant impact on our livelihoods. With the introduction of the horse to our people in the 1500’s, we were able to develop unique methods to more effectively and efficiently hunt, fish, gather, trade, transport goods, pack and move camp to avoid danger, as well as defend our communities and territory. In addition, the decisions we make daily looks far different today than it used to, but we have been planning for millenia. Our oral tradition has taught us valuable lessons and helped “preserve the history and ceremonies of the Tribes through a strict and sacred process.”¹ Our knowledge is rooted in an understanding of the complexities of the natural world and its cycles, has been passed down through many generations, and is reflected in the decisions we make daily. In the thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans, we lived in diplomatic, commercially-viable and culturally-strong societies with established governments, education systems, and health care. For many centuries, each Tribe of the Three Affiliated Tribes maintained unique bands, clan systems and ceremonial bundles. While each have a unique and special history, it is our shared history that brings us to where we are today. Central to the creation story of the Mandan and Hidatsa, we were created in the Missouri River area and have always lived here. Archaeologists and anthropologists theorize that the Mandan established themselves firmly at the Heart River (translation) in 1000 A.D. For protection, economic and social prosperity, the Three Affiliated Tribes united when the Hidatsa joined the Mandan in 1600 A.D. and the Sahnish (Arikara) in 1862. Historical accounts from explorers and French traders such as Sieur de la La Verendrye (1738), Lewis and Clark (1804), and artist George Catlin (1833) recount that the Mandan “were a large and powerful nation who feared none of their neighbors”, and prospered for many years in large and well fortified villages, growing crops (corn, pumpkins and other vegetables) and developing a trade hub that brought Tribes from across the continent. As Europeans moved west along the Great Plains, the course of our history was altered forever. Not only did they massacre the bison, they brought with them devastating diseases such as smallpox (1772, 1792, 1836, 1837, and 1856) and influenza. At one time, an estimated population of 15,000 strong and prosperous Mandan were reduced to nearly 125 individuals. They also took our land. The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851) explicitly recognized our (among other Tribes’) ancestral right to 12-14 million acres of territory that spanned areas within what is now North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska and Wyoming. Through repeated land grabs (from the Allotment  “Dawes” Act of 1887) by the Federal government and the BIA, this land area was eventually reduced to nearly 500,000 acres of Indian owned land. In 1870, Fort Berthold Reservation was officially designated. With the construction of the Garrison Dam and Lake Sakakawea in 1956, one-sixth of the Fort Berthold area was flooded (152,360 acres), and 70% of our road and bridge infrastructure was permanently lost. This displaced our families, destroyed sacred sites, ruined the best farmland, flooded valuable natural resources, destroyed the economy, and isolated communities that had previously been connected. Our resiliency and planning has carried us to today.