Tribe getting piece of Minnesota back more than a century after ancestors died there

Source: Associated Press

Tribe getting piece of Minnesota back more than a century after ancestors died there

BY TRISHA AHMED
Updated 12:07 AM EDT, September 3, 2023

GRANITE FALLS, Minn. (AP) — Golden prairies and winding rivers of a Minnesota state park also hold the secret burial sites of Dakota people who died as the United States failed to fulfill treaties with Native Americans more than a century ago. Now their descendants are getting the land back.

The state is taking the rare step of transferring the park with a fraught history back to a Dakota tribe, trying to make amends for events that led to a war and the largest mass hanging in U.S. history.

“It’s a place of holocaust. Our people starved to death there,” said Kevin Jensvold, chairman of the Upper Sioux Community, a small tribe with about 550 members just outside the park.

The Upper Sioux Agency State Park in southwestern Minnesota spans a little more than 2 square miles (about 5 square kilometers) and includes the ruins of a federal complex where officers withheld supplies from Dakota people, leading to starvation and deaths.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-native-american-land-back-b09c0dc8dd6289a1545684e04599f94f