Star Tribune
Red Wing closes dog park as Dakota reclaim burial mounds
The Prairie Island Indian Community has known for decades where the bodies of its Dakota ancestors are buried: within A.P. Anderson Park in Red Wing.
Thanks to a recent agreement with the city of Red Wing, the burial mounds in that park west of downtown on Highway 61 are on their way to being restored.
The city of Red Wing shuttered a dog park inside A.P. Anderson last week as part of a plan to reclaim the land for Dakota use. City officials are also in the process of tearing down old playground equipment built in the 1960s over an area where mounds are suspected following state guidelines.
Red Wing Mayor Mike Wilson said the project is a natural extension of the work done over the past year to teach the community about its Dakota roots.
“It’s been a very educational year,” Wilson said.
It’s the first step in a vision to make it part of an educational area for the community. Prairie Island officials envision a green space and potentially reconstructing the burial mounds, though revamping the park is likely years away.
“That’s the conversation we can have when there’s tribal voices at the table,” Franky Jackson of Prairie Island’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office said.
The project is decades in the making. The mounds were first recorded in 1885 by T.H. Lewis, the first archaeologist to systematically survey historical sites in Minnesota. Lewis surveyed more than 12,000 mounds throughout the state in the 1880s and 1890s.
There used to be about 3,000 mounds in the Red Wing area, but almost all of them have been lost over the years as the city was built over them. But the mounds that remain date back hundreds of years, some as old as 2,000 years, according to Jackson.
Area Dakota have urged Red Wing for decades to preserve the burial mounds at A.P. Anderson Park. There was some work done in the 1980s and 1990s to map out Dakota cemeteries, but the city didn’t take action at that time.
The city and Prairie Island didn’t come together on historic projects in the area until 2019 when the city moved to prohibit graffiti on He Mni Can (pronounced heh-meh-NEE-cha), a bluff along the Mississippi River.
Known to residents as Barn Bluff, the area is considered sacred Dakota ground. Since then, Red Wing and Prairie Island have partnered to recognize He Mni Can. The groups signed a memorandum of understanding in 2022 to preserve more historic and culturally significant spots in the community, including the burial ground at A.P. Anderson.
Michelle Leise, a community liaison for the city of Red Wing, said the city has failed in the past to respect Dakota land but the renewed relationship is bringing benefits to both sides.
“This is a different time, and so we just look at this differently than before,” she said. “I can’t really speak to the past but I do know the work that we’ve done over the past five years.”
City officials knew the playground equipment obstructed some of the burial mounds in the area, but they only learned about the dog park issues in August. The city has put up a temporary dog park nearby and plans to install a replacement park some time next year.
For Jackson, the burial mound project means a new opportunity for area Dakota to learn about their own history.
“We all have a greater responsibility to be better stewards,” Jackson said.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings