indigenous

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will be closing the Upper Sioux Agency State Park in February as part of their work to transfer the land back to the Upper Sioux Community, a tribe that has occupied the area bordering the Minnesota River Valley for thousands of years.

The park will be closed to the public beginning February 16, as it prepares to transfer the land back to the Upper Sioux Community.

The Upper Sioux Community has had a longstanding request for the State of Minnesota to return the land that holds secret burial sites of Dakota people who died during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 when the U.S. government failed to fulfill treaty promises

The 1,3000-acre park of rolling hills, bent oak trees, and wild prairie flowers includes the remains of a government-run campus of employee housing, warehouses, and a manual labor school that was destroyed in the war.

read more: https://nativenewsonline.net/environment/upper-sioux-community-to-reacquire-current-state-park-land-where-ancestors-are-buried