Inch by muddy inch, the lake reveals what it has held underwater for so long.

It isn't pretty anymore. Nothing that was forcefully drowned decades ago would be.

North Dakotans who aren't nearing 60 years old never once in their lives saw the beauty of the Missouri River Valley before it was flooded behind Garrison Dam.

Now, in a long dry spell, the water slides down, seemingly seeking that old river channel.

It is a silted, goopy mess. Weeds choke like kudzu where the water has been gone long enough.

This land coming back is the return of a prodigal son, unrecognizable and broken after being gone all of these years.

The tragedy is that the land flooded by Lake Sakakawea starting in the early '50s was the fairest son of all.

Timber, grass, hay and gardens flourished there. So did people, whose ancestors inhabited the river land for thousands of years.

Generations have gone by, and it's easy to forget the pain that once was Garrison Dam, especially for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara on Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

More than 300 Indian families, eight of their towns, their schools, churches and thousands of their dead were in the bull's-eye: Get out of the way, or go under.

There was nothing like that displacement anywhere else when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed six dams from Montana to Nebraska to prevent catastrophic downstream flooding.

The corps took 156,000 acres from Fort Berthold, displacing 90 percent of the population from successful farms, ranches and communities.

With a pencil the color of water, it erased a fragile culture that was finally healthy and expanding after a close brush with extinction from smallpox.

They wept a river of tears.

Today, the Three Affiliated Tribes are asking the corps to give them some of that land back.

They want about 36,000 acres bordering both sides of Lake Sakakawea.

Tribal Chairman Tex Hall said that requesting the land's return is part of the tribes' longstanding goal of regaining ancestral lands.

It's land above 1,850 feet that the corps will have to first determine it no longer needs to maintain or operate the dam. It has authority to transfer the land under the Fort Berthold Minerals Restoration Act. The act was reiterated in a 1992 settlement that put $142 million in trust for the tribes' health, education and economic development to compensate for the flood of Garrison Dam.

Most of it is leased for grazing, though some is leased to nontribal public entities for recreation and wildlife reserves.

The matter will be discussed publicly at hearings Tuesday in Bismarck, Wednesday in Dickinson and Thursday in Williston.

The scheduled meetings are as follows:

3 Tuesday - Bismarck, Ramkota Inn, 800 S. Third St.

3 Wednesday - Dick-inson, Days Inn, 532 15th St. W.

3 Thursday - Williston, Airport International Inn, Highway 2 and 85 North.

At each location, the public can visit one-on-one with corps officials from 4 to 6 p.m.

In addition, people can have their comments formally recorded during a traditional comment session that will run from 6 to 8 p.m. at each meeting.

The transfer could have been made from federal agency to federal agency without public comment.

Because it could affect access to the lake and lease relationships, county and state officials asked for input.

McLean County State's Attorney Ladd Erickson said the corps has never created a map, so the public can't see what land is involved.

He said he wants to get a handle on it, so he'll know how those parts of the transfer inside county lines will affect the public.

The land is in varying widths on both sides of the lake, generally fairly high on the geological bench. Much of it is rocky pasture.

Hall said the tribes would honor any existing leases because recreation and tourism are part of the tribes' economic development plan.

The rich bottomland will never come back, to the reservation, or anyone.

Marilyn Cross Hudson was a girl in a long-gone reservation river town called Elbowoods. She is now a respected elder and curator of the 4 Bears Museum at Fort Berthold.

She thinks the land may have some significance to the tribal government, but little to her generation.

Returning the land is a matter of fairness, she said. Her father, Marty Cross, was a tribal councilman in the 1940s. He tried as desperately as any other tribal official to prevent the dam from being built.

Cross and others, wearing suits dug out of charity barrels in church basements, made trips to Washington, D.C., to plead the reservation's case. The tribes offered free land for the dam further upstream in an attempt to save their communities.

"I think it is a hollow victory. Or is it really even a victory, or just a gesture?" Hudson said.

Still, she thinks if her father were alive, he'd want the land back and would find a beneficial way to use it for tribal members.

Hall, the chairman, said the land would be managed along with 100,000 acres of trust that's already part of the reservation.

The land would be transferred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and held in trust for the reservation.

"It's not the land that we remember. The places where most people lived are under water and always will be," Hudson said.

Paul VanDevelder is a freelance writer and author of "Coyote Warrior," a book that examines the politics and human tragedy behind the flood of Garrison Dam.

VanDevelder said the corps promised to return any unneeded trust land in an agreement worked out in the '50s.

In condemning land for the flood of Garrison Dam, the federal government was taking from Fort Berthold much of the very same land it was holding in trust for the reservation.

That amounted to the greatest irony and illegality of the entire action, VanDevelder said.

He said this transfer is this generation's opportunity to right an old wrong and recognize that there is no statute of limitations on sacred covenants.

Asking why members of Fort Berthold don't "get over the effects of Garrison Dam is like asking the Jews why they don't get over the Holocaust," VanDevelder said. "The trauma goes on for generations."

Still, VanDevelder said that North Dakotans will have to face their racism when talking about transferring land back, especially land that may affect traditional uses and access to the lake.

There is fear and a lack of trust, he said.

He said it's worth noting that, despite the deplorable condition of Lake Sakakawea, the record low water levels, the mud and the hardship for lakeshore recreation operators, people of Fort Berthold have shown restraint and kindness.

"Not one of them has ever said, 'I told you so,'" VanDevelder said.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)