The Power of Shared Vision
Bill
Patrie
North Dakota Association of Rural Cooperatives
Native people who once ruled
these plains had a great vision. They believed that a day would come
when their people would cover the land. Their tepees would spread as
far as the eye could see, following an endless supply of buffalo. In
1804, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and the Corps of Discovery dragged
their keel boat up to where the Missouri River turns west. According
to author Stephen Ambrose in "Undaunted Courage," more people lived
along the banks of the Missouri and Heart than lived in Washington,
D.C.
It was near present-day Mandan
that President Thomas Jefferson's aggressive vision for his new nation
collided with the dreams of nations who had lived here for centuries.
While both visions suffered major damage from the cultural collision,
it was the white man's vision that survived and prospered, leading to
military forts to protect the trade routes and eventually the settlers
that poured into Dakota Territory.
Now a new vision began to
form. This vision was not refined in counsel fires or in the confabs
of Jefferson's Monticello. Rather, it grew in the minds of men trudging
behind horse-drawn plows. And women who had given up wood frame houses
for dirt walls and ceiling crawling with bugs nurtured it in their hearts.
That vision was of schools
and churches and better machinery. It was a vision of healthy children
and a doctor in town. It was a vision of becoming a state and gaining
political respectability.
The vision roared into life
with statehood, new wood frame houses, train depots and passenger service
to anywhere. Trains crossed the Missouri, connected the nation and hauled
our young men to ships in Europe. The young state survived the first
great war and filled with farms, towns and machinery dealers. It was
the drought of the 1930s that collided with this vibrant vision, nothing
but thistles to feed cattle and horses; no prices, time to get out.
Like a giant fly wheel, though,
the vision turned on, slowed but not stopped. It held families together,
provided endurance in the face of withering tiredness and the will to
save the farm. Somehow hope was not lost.
Those who despaired left
defeated, but those who lived through the Great Depression emerged debt
free. They also emerged with a terrible unrelenting fear that it could
happen again. A belief that unwarranted optimism was a hateful thing.
The second great war was a distraction from the failing vision. Temporary
prices provided an abatement from the fear of the future.
The Iverson oil well in 1951
spawned millionaires and swept away the second class status of the dry
dirt farmers of western North Dakota. The oil embargo and the sale of
wheat to the Soviet Union accelerated the vision wheel. The vision now
included four wheel drives, sunflowers and oil leases. However, the
drought came back, oil prices dropped, and machinery dealers folded
up their tents. With just a hundred years behind us the state struggled
to its feet and amassed 100,000 people in 100-degree heat on the capitol
mall, and spent money on "Vision 2000."
The last decade of the millennium
opened with "Growing North Dakota" in 1991, and Dakota Grower's Pasta.
At long last, good news, more cooperatives, more investments and more
ideas for prosperity. Then, like a recurring nightmare, prices slide,
and the auctioneer's gavel pounds, scab forces down yields and political
blame boils over freedom to farm, freedom to fail. This time the vision
wheel stops dead.
Sore hands are placed on
the wheel, aided by Ag students who still want to farm. They pull sincerely,
gently to start the wheel. Fear and cynicism are powerful resistance.
The vision is a gyroscope holding the state from despair and hopelessness,
directing us to a better place.
The Commission on the Future
of Agriculture accepted the pounding of fists in anger and mild insanity
to create a new vision a North Dakota with quality health care, schools,
churches, prosperous farms and thriving communities.
This vision of what we want
to create is more important than our current reality. A shared vision
by North Dakota people is our most important asset. It is sacred and
we must care for it, nourish it and preserve it. For, as Peter Senge
writes in "The Fifth Discipline," few forces in human affairs pack the
power of shared vision.
Funding
for Prairie Renaissance is provided by a grant from USDA Rural Development
and by the Members of Prairie Public Television.
