No. 1 Hard

Some of the state’s efforts to draw capital have born the mark of desperation. One of the most highly publicized cases involved funding for a hockey stadium in Grand Forks. Hockey is highly cherished in a state that sees a lot of winter; it’s said that kids in North Dakota learn to skate before they can walk. So, in 1988, when Ralph Engelstad, who once played goalie for the University of North Dakota’s Fighting Sioux, offered to pay five million dollars for improvements to the stadium, the school was thrilled. The only problem was that Engelstad, a Las Vegas casino owner who died in 2002, was a blatant racist. The Nevada Gaming Control Board had once fined him $1.5 million for damaging the state’s reputation—no easy task. His offense involved throwing birthday parties for Hitler, complete with swastika cakes and German marching music, and owning a bumper-sticker printing plate that read, “Hitler Was Right.”

The Vegas controversy posed a real conundrum for the people of North Dakota, who are mostly gentile. Not wishing to jump to conclusions, the university sent a delegation to Las Vegas to speak with Engelstad personally. And even though one member of the group told The Chronicle of Higher Education that she saw a Nazi propaganda poster among Engelstad’s collection of memorabilia, the university eventually accepted Engelstad’s five million dollars. The man was not a Nazi sympathizer, officials reasoned, but someone who merely displayed “bad taste.”

The Engelstad issue came up again in 1998, when the casino owner offered eighty-five million dollars for an entirely new hockey arena. The university, at the time, was debating whether to ditch the Fighting Sioux name, which many in North Dakota—Indians especially—find objectionable. (Fans of the Sioux’s rival hockey team, the North Dakota State Bison, out of Fargo, are known to wear T-shirts depicting an Indian between the legs of a buffalo that reads, “We saw. They sucked. We came.”) Other college sports teams had already made changes: the Dartmouth Indians became the Big Green; the Stanford Indians became the Cardinal; the Marquette Warriors became the Golden Eagles. Engelstad, not to be cowed by the forces of political correctness, and continuing to display his signature bad taste, announced that he would retract his offer, should the team name be changed. The university voted immediately, and thus was the team’s fate sealed. The Fighting Sioux would thereafter slap around pucks at Ralph Engelstad Arena.

But still the matter wasn’t dead. The stadium is now at the center of a new controversy, as the National Collegiate Athletic Association begins to enforce a ban on Indian imagery considered “hostile or abusive.” If the N.C.A.A. has its way, the university will have to cover some three thousand Fighting Sioux logos, a brown face with dangling eagle feathers, before it can host a championship.

Downtown Fargo represents perhaps the state’s greatest financial success to date. Designated a “Renaissance Zone”—which means that new businesses don’t have to pay property, or state or local income taxes for five years—the Broadway strip, especially, has undergone a notable transformation. Mixed among longstanding businesses, such as the Golden Razor barber shop, Metro Drug, and Hurley’s religious goods, there are now gourmet coffee shops, health food stores, yoga studios, and various ethnic restaurants. The streetscape itself has been spiffed up with fancy light fixtures and benches, where people sit and read the paper and drink their gourmet coffee. And at the corner of Broadway and First Avenue, there is the Hotel Donaldson. Built in 1893, the hulking building has served as an Odd Fellows lodge and also a transient hotel. For a time, it stood vacant. And then, in 2003, it reopened as a luxury hotel, with a library of books by regional authors and rooms designed around works by local artists—one features the pottery of Richard Bresnahan, a North Dakota native who now teaches at St. John’s University.

This new Fargo is such a novelty, it warranted mention in a 2004 issue of Travel and Leisure magazine. “With an explosion of Microsoft money and young talent, downtown Fargo is morphing from a Coen brothers punch line to the Seattle of the Plains.” That is most certainly overstating the case, but in contrast to the rest of the state, Fargo is doing quite well. The city’s population has increased dramatically, twenty percent during the 1980s and another twenty percent during the 1990s, to its current one hundred thousand or so. And, as mentioned in Travel and Leisure, the city did attract a small Microsoft campus, formerly Great Plains Software. Things are blossoming, and now politicians and businesspeople can point to Fargo as a place of potential. They can say that North Dakota is not a wasteland at all, that North Dakota has an identity that is connected to the future.

A good portion of the city’s population growth has come thanks to immigrants from far-away places, as far as Africa and the Middle East. It’s the job of Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota to place refugees in the state, several hundred per year. Most are grouped in Fargo. A recent article in Fargo’s Forum estimated the city’s refugee population at nearly six thousand. “Fargo has had a nice Somali resettlement,” said Darci Asche, community liaison for Lutheran Social Services. “I wouldn’t call it a neighborhood, but we have a fairly organized Somali community.” Fargo natives are receptive to Somalis, explained Asche, because they are Muslim and exhibit strong “family values.” There are the occasional curmudgeons, of course. And whenever someone expresses discomfort—it’s not unheard of for Lutheran Social Services to get calls demanding to know why the city can’t get refugees from Norway and Germany instead—Asche points out the upside. “Because we have a declining population,” she tells people, “this is one way that the labor force stays strong. This is one way to keep companies here and coming here.”

On the southwest end of town, in what locals refer to as “Little Mogadishu,” sits the African Market, a modest grocery. Nwinel Taoh, who moved to Fargo from Nigeria with her husband six years ago, leaned against the counter at the front of the store, drinking water from a milk carton. Her hair in braids, she spit a little water onto the floor through a gap in her front teeth. “I don’t love it here,” she said, “but I can’t go anywhere else.” She explained that the couple didn’t know anyone when they arrived, though they have friends now, nor did she speak English. The whole experience was rather a shock.

That’s where Lutheran Social Services comes in, providing English classes and job training. “We have a huge call for certified nursing assistants,” said Asche. In fact, the demand for bodies to provide medical care to North Dakota’s aging population is so great that the medical industry partially pays for the English lessons. One thing Asche can’t prepare newcomers for, however, is the winter. Taoh said, as a handful of customers browsed the aisles, that she’s adapted to her new home. But when asked about the cold, she slumped on her elbows. “I stay inside,” she said. “The winters make me sick.”