Third Ghost Dance War

First a word on terminology. In the UCAS this is called the 'Red River Crisis of 2064' whereas the Sioux know it as the 'Third Ghost Dance War' a term that confuses us easterners and anglos. So, let me lay it out for you:

* The First Ghost Dance War was a religious and military movement, an attempt to use the 'Ghost Dance' ritual to drive the old USA off of their lands in 1890. This was before the Awakening. The US won this round pretty handily and no magic actually occurred.
* The Second Ghost Dance War, often called 'The Great Ghost Dance' was when Daniel Howling Coyote used the Ghost Dance Ritual during the Awakening to actually drive the USA off of about half the continent. It is what drew the map we know today and brought about the existence of the Native American Nations (NAN). A pretty clear win for the NAN.
* The name 'Third Ghost Dance War' is actually a little deceptive in that no actual ghost dance occurred, but so-called because they see it as continuing the work of revanchism begun during the Second Ghost Dance War. Also it wasn't an actual full-scale war. More a series of border skirmishes and incidents that almost ended in open warfare. Not a war, maybe, but skirting right along the edge of one.

So, a lot of this you're going to remember. After all, this is 2064 we're talking about here, just about ten years ago. Pretty much everybody reading this was alive during this time, even if their only memories are of grown-ups talking about the news.

First a little background about Fargo between the Awakening and 2064. With the border a little over a hundred miles away at the Missouri Escarpment, Fargo thrived as a trade hub between Bismarck in what is now the Upper Yankton Council and the Minneapolis-St.Paul Metroplex. And where there's trade, there's smuggling.

* Ryan 'Buddy' Underberg becomes the Minneapolis Combine's point man in Fargo, coordinating smuggling of goods and people with their partners in the Tiospaye on the other side of the border.
* The population swells as non-Native (or 'Anglos') are driven out of the retaken Sioux lands and pass through or settle in the greater Fargo-Moorhead Area, driving the population to over half a million.
* The Old Man's grip on the Fargo-Moorhead area becomes stronger, as his land development company gathers some of the most powerful local businesses into a single consortium, The Red River Valley Investment, Holdings and Development Group or just 'The Group', the largest single economic force in the region.
* As Fargo's population and the Group's holdings and influence increase so does their construction activities in Fargo's downtown area. Over thirty years of constant construction have turned the area into a single interconnected complex known locally as The Block.

So for anyone too young to remember, or who spent the 2060's playing Neil the Ork Barbarian sims, 2064 was a pretty wild year in the UCAS. Still reeling from the chaos Halley's Comet brought us three years earlier, a radical bunch of drekheads called the "New Revolution" took up the old red banner of 'Making North America Great Again' and tried to overthrow the UCAS government, and actually did look like they might pull it off until they were put down by then-Brigadier General Angela Collaton, earning her a promotion and launching her political career.

The New Revolution manifested in the upper Midwest in the form of the North Star Republic, which led an uprising in the MSPlex in conjunction with New Revolution groups elsewhere. The North Star had a strong following in Fargo (still does, even ten years later), especially among displaced refugees from the Sioux lands and there was a lot of rhetoric about 'Taking Back Our Country', which echoed New Revolution promises to take back the lands the Native peoples had taken back from them (ain't history fun, kids?)

Now, while a lot of people back east found it easy to ignore this part of the New Revolution platform, people were listening. The Seven Council Fires, government of the Oceti Sakowin, in Tsêhéstáno, were taking this all very seriously. Concerned that if the New Revolution succeeded, they might be facing a new, aggressive hostile power along their most contested border, they decided to take action.

The Oceti Sakowin, the military powerhouse of the middle of the continent, was feeling particularly vulnerable at this moment, as a large chunk of that military was tied up in the west, sunk into the quagmire that was the Tsimshian Crisis. It was decided that the best defense was a good, and preemptive, offence and the whole of the Sioux Defense Force that wasn't caught up in the Tsimshian was mobilized and a Joint Resolution was rushed through the Sovereign Tribal Council. A massive "Peacekeeping Mission" across the Escarpment was organized around the SDF, with armored divisions on loan from their allies in the Kiis'ianii Naalyéhé há Dohwee'aohii and magical support from their neighbors in the Niswi-mishkodewinan. Famed Shirt-Wearer Mariah Screaming Bird, a hero of the Second Ghost Dance and a personal confidant of Howling Coyote, who was called out retirement to lead the Mission back across the border and into the UCAS.

While this was a direct violation of the Treaty of Denver which ended the Second Ghost Dance War, the UCAS was in no shape to do anything about it. The local UCAS military commander, Colonel Raymond Cole at the Grand Forks AFB a couple hundred miles north of Fargo, rolled over almost immediately. The odds were never in his favor, Cole was a mediocre career political officer with two understrength fighter wings who's loyalty he couldn't be sure of against a legendary battle shaman and war hero leading the armed might of three nations.

By the time Collaton had put down the New Revolution and UCAS reinforcements could be spared to go west there were Sioux boots on the streets of Winnipeg, Grand Forks, Fargo and Wahpeton, holding the Red River of the North. The Alexandria Accords that ended the conflict ceded the rest of what had been the old US states of North and South Dakota to the Sioux.

The Red River of the North was established as the border between the two nations, defined by a Demilitarized Zone along the river, The Red River Disputed Military Zone, to be jointly administered by the UCAS and Sioux, stretching from Wahpeton in the south to Winnipeg in the North, with Fargo at its heart...

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