Dakota tribe to reclaim Minnesota land after 160 years
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For the first time in history, the US is returning a troubled park to a Dakota tribe, in an attempt to undo years of war and the greatest mass hanging in US history.
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The Upper Sioux Agency State Park near Granite Falls, Minnesota where bodies of those killed after a US-Dakota war are buried (AP)
A Minnesota state park's beautiful plains and meandering rivers also house the hidden burial places of Dakota people who perished when the United States failed to honor treaties with Native Americans more than a century ago. Their descendants are now reclaiming the land.
This is the first time in history that the state is taking the step of returning a troubled park to a Dakota tribe in an attempt to undo years of war and the greatest mass hanging in US history.
Kevin Jensvold, chairman of the Upper Sioux Community, a small tribe with about 550 members, remarked that the site is akin to a holocaust, expressing that "our people starved to death there."
The state park covers slightly more than 5 square kilometers and contains the remnants of a federal complex where authorities withheld supplies from Dakota people, resulting in famine and death.
According to the Minnesota Historical Society, after decades of tensions, a war broke out in 1862 between colonialist American settlers and the Dakota people.
When the US won the war, more individuals were hung than in any other execution in the US.
In Mankato, 177 kilometers from the park, a memorial recalls the 38 Dakota men murdered.
Read more: Indigenous America: The US kills its victim and walks in its funeral
Jensvold revealed that he has been pleading with the authorities for 18 years to restore the park to his tribe. He began when a tribe leader told him that it was unreasonable for Dakota people at the time to have to pay a state charge for each visit to their ancestors' graves there.
When Democrats seized control of the house, senate, and governor's office for the first time in over a decade, lawmakers finally allowed the transfer, according to state senator Mary Kunesh, a Democrat and descendant of the Standing Rock Nation.
Kunesh has expressed that speaking out against past crimes allows people to see just how treaties were often unfulfilled, adding that people seem more interested now in “doing the right thing and getting lands back to tribes."
However, the transfer has sparked fear from Mayor Dave Smiglewski of fewer tourists and profit.
He and other opponents argue that recreational property and historic sites should be publicly held rather than handed to a few individuals, even if lawmakers put aside funds for the state to purchase land to compensate for losses in the transfer.
According to Smiglewski, “People that want to make things right with history’s injustices are compelled often to support an action like this without thinking about other ramifications,” questioning "where would it stop?" regarding the fate of other state parks that have "similar sacred meaning."
Only days ago, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition uncovered 115 more institutions than the previous 408 federally recognized ones, increasing the total number of schools that forced Native American children to assimilate into White culture in the United States to 523.
Last May, a report from the US Department of the Interior revealed that more than 500 Native American children died in US government-run boarding schools at which students were physically abused and denied food.
