8 Best Places to Learn About North Dakota’s Native American Heritage

North Dakota’s Landscape Holds Centuries of Native American History

From ancient village sites to modern cultural centers, the state’s indigenous peoples, including the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Dakota, and Ojibwe nations, have left an indelible mark on these lands.

Here’s your guide to the most significant places where you can learn about and experience Native American culture in North Dakota.

Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site

• Address: 5645 Knife River Indian Villages Rd, Stanton, ND 58571
• Entrance Fee: $7 per adult (Free for children 15 and under)

The Knife River Indian Villages were a major Native American trade center for centuries before becoming a fur trading hub after 1750.

Earthen depressions mark the land where Hidatsa earth lodges once stood from the 1400s to 1845. At the visitor center are displays of buffalo-horn spoons and clay pots, along with Lewis and Clark’s journals.

Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park

• Address: 4480 Fort Lincoln Rd, Mandan, ND 58554
• Entrance Fee: $7 per vehicle (Annual pass available)

The park is one of the most immersive on this list. Smoke usually rises from the central fire pit, one of five recreations at On-A-Slant Village. Children can touch replica tools and furs while park rangers demonstrate the “Three Sisters” gardening traditions.

Unlike many museums, visitors here can enter each lodge, sit on buffalo-hide beds, and handle stone tools.

Three Affiliated Tribes Museum

• Address: 120 Memorial Highway, New Town, ND 58763
• Entrance Fee: Free (Donations accepted)

Water plays a major role in the story told in this New Town museum – both the Missouri River that supported tribal life and the flood that destroyed it when it was built in 1953.

The buffalo hide on display at the museum is a rare artifact, showing horse-mounted warriors who survived both the smallpox epidemics and the flood.

The museum has started offering classes on traditional tribal food preparation, including fish smoking and bison jerky making.

Four Bears Museum

• Address: 423 4th Ave, New Town, ND 58763
• Entrance Fee: Free

Named for two chiefs (one Mandan, one Hidatsa) who shared the name “Four Bears,” this round building reflects traditional lodge architecture.

The wide windows look out over Lake Sakakawea, the reservoir that flooded ancestral villages in the 1950s. Recordings of tribal elders play throughout the museum as they personal stories. adding personal stories to the displays of intricate porcupine quillwork and painted robes.

Join the cultural events at MHA Nation Interpretive Center to experience tribal culture and living history programs.

Plains Art Museum

• Address: 704 1st Ave N, Fargo, ND 58102
• Entrance Fee: Free (Donations welcome)

Unlike historical museums, the focus here is on living artists with their Native artist residency program.

Bold paintings by contemporary Native artists like Fritz Scholder and T.C. Cannon hang next to traditional parfleches and beadwork. Explore Native creative arts ranging from winter count painting to digital animation, exploring tribal themes.

Don’t forget to drop by the large star quilt by Dakota artist Mary Red Cloud. It’s the museum’s standout piece: a massive star quilt in bright purples and reds.

North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum

• Address: 612 E Boulevard Ave, Bismarck, ND 58505
• Entrance Fee: Free

Stepping into the Innovation Gallery means traveling back 13,000 years along a curved path through time.

Life-sized dioramas show how Native housing evolved from hide tipis to complex earth lodges. The giant mammoth skeleton on display is a significant part of the museum’s “Ice Age” exhibit, found near Native American hunting grounds.

The museum also holds North Dakota’s largest collection of Knife River flint tools, a distinctive honey-colored stone that tribes traded across half the continent.

Standing Rock Visitor Center

• Address: 1151 Fort Yates, ND 58538
• Entrance Fee: Free (Donations accepted)

Here, the revered Sitting Bull’s story is told through his actual possessions, including his rifle and ceremonial pipe.

A timeline further connects the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn to the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests, emphasizing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s ongoing fight for land and water rights.

The center’s archive holds over 50 Winter Count hides, painted histories created by tribal historians. Cultural demonstrators regularly set up in the center’s gathering space to show traditional skills like hide tanning and star quilt making.

Gingras Trading Post State Historic Site

• Address: 2225 10th St NW, Washburn, ND 58577
• Entrance Fee: $5 per vehicle

Step through the door of North Dakota’s oldest standing trading post, built in the 1840s by Métis trader Antoine Gingras.

Original rough-hewn counters and shelves line the walls of this well-preserved building. The exhibits highlight the significance of pelts in the economy of the region, with interpreters in period dresses showing how animal pelts were graded and valued.

The site’s unique focus on Métis culture, a mix of Native and French-Canadian, is also reflected in displays of beaded moccasins with distinctive floral patterns.

The site now offers live reenactments of fur trading scenarios and hands-on workshops on Métis-style finger weaving.