Frazer, Assiniboine Gateway

Frazer began as a railroad siding on the Manitoba Road in eighteen eighty-eight, little more than a grain-loading stop in Valley County. A post office opened in nineteen oh seven. What gives Frazer its identity is location: it sits on the western edge of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, where Assiniboine members of the Fort Peck tribes have historically concentrated.

The eastern part of the reservation is Sioux country; the west, including Frazer, belongs more to Assiniboine heritage. Today grain elevators dominate the skyline and trains still roar through constantly, hauling cargo from the oil fields of the Williston Basin to the east. Frazer is small, fewer than five hundred people, but its place on the western reservation boundary makes it a quiet marker of the internal geography that shapes Fort Peck life.