Byron Dorgan: “I wish to offer a brief statement in tribute to Nathan Good Iron. Nathan J. Good Iron was a high school basketball star…”

“I wish to offer a brief statement in tribute to Nathan Good Iron. Nathan J. Good Iron was a high school basketball star, a college student, a new father. This young man of promise died in an enemy attack in Afghanistan a year ago while serving with a unit of the North Dakota National Guard, the 188th Air Defense Artillery. His family learned the terrible news on Thanksgiving Day of 2006. Nathan was a Hidatsa Indian, a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara of the Fort Berthold Reservation. For more than a thousand years, the Hidatsa people have lived in just a single place, along the banks of the Missouri River in North Dakota. Always a pastoral people, they resided in sizeable cities, cultivating extensive, lush gardens along the river, hunting buffalo and other game in the prairies around them. When white adventurers and traders began showing up, the Hidatsa were welcoming and friendly. Their villages, and those of their nearby allies--the Mandan and Arikara--were centers of trade and exploration. But when it was necessary, when enemies invaded their homeland, the Hidatsa proved themselves strong and valiant warriors, establishing a long, epic history of courage and valor on the battlefield. Such traits are not easily lost by a civilization. They persist through the generations. And the Hidatsa now have a new symbol of bravery, Nathan Good Iron. Nathan was recently honored by a 3-day powwow in his memory.”