Earlier this month, Bluestem posted Upper Sioux Community Pezihutazizi Oyate land transfer clears first MN House committee hearing.
Last week, the Senate companion bill, New Brighton DFLer Mary Kunesh's SF2250 was heard in the Senate Environment, Climate, and Legacy Committee on Tuesday, then moved to the Transportation Committee for a Friday hearing.
At the West Center Tribune, Linda Vanderwerf reports in Bill to transfer state park land to Upper Sioux Community clears two Minnesota Senate committees:
Legislation to return ancestral lands to the Upper Sioux Community near Granite Falls encountered some opposition in Minnesota Senate hearings in the past week.
The legislation would transfer more than 1,000 acres in the Upper Sioux Agency State Park to the Upper Sioux Community, and the park would close. The land would be transferred at no cost to the community.
A fiscal report released this week indicates the cost to the state for full transfer of the land and purchasing land for a new park is estimated to cost nearly $6 million.
There is no date for the park closing yet or for the land transfer to take place. It could take several years. The fiscal report does not include a discussion of the cost of developing facilities, roads and trails in a new park.
In a Tuesday hearing, the Minnesota Senate Environment, Climate and Legacy Committee moved the bill along to the Transportation Committee for further consideration on a split vote.
On Friday, the Transportation Committee adopted an amendment appropriating $1.2 million in fiscal year 2024, which begins July 1.
The appropriation would pay for costs related to preparing for the transfer, including removing the Yellow Medicine River Bridge and a section of what used to be state Highway 67 near the park. The road has been damaged — resulting in the rerouting of a portion of Highway 67 to avoid the failed area — and the bridge is in danger due to ground movement in the area.
The committee referred the bill back to the Environment, Climate and Legacy Committee.
Upper Sioux Tribal Chairman Kevin Jensvold has testified at committee hearings about the land’s past as a site of starvation and genocide. When promised payments from the government weren’t delivered to the Dakota on time, people starved.
The park’s land was the site of battles in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.
The ancestral land has many burial sites and other locations that are sacred to his people, Jensvold said.
He said he’s talked about and asked for the land transfer for 18 years, since he became chairman.
The Environment, Climate and Legacy Committee hearing brought some pointed comments about the plan.
Many came from Sen. Andrew Lang, R-Olivia, who is familiar with the Minnesota River Valley, where the park is located.
Lang noted that some who use the park or live near it hadn’t heard about the legislation before it was introduced. . . .
Pro-settler self-described "independent" historians Stephanie Chappell and Curtis Dahlin argued that hundreds of white settlers killed in the war are buried in the park. Vanderwerf reports:
. . . Stephanie Chappell of Glencoe testified at the first hearing of the week and submitted a written statement for the second. She said she spoke on behalf of descendants of white settlers who also died in the 1862 war.
“That entire area is burial grounds,” she said. Hundreds of European Americans are buried in unmarked graves there.
If the land is turned over to the Upper Sioux Community, descendants may not be able to honor their ancestors on the land, she said. . . .
A second note of opposition to the land transfer was in a statement filed with the Transportation Committee by Curtis Dahlin, of Roseville. He urged that “any and all burials” on the land be recognized and be accessible to people who wish to pay their respects.
Whatever the two lay historians told the Senators, Dahlin's own spreadsheet of white people who perished in the war suggests that only a small percentage of the "hundreds" he and Chappell speculated were killed and buried at Upper Sioux Agency State Park.
The Senate hearings themselves can be reviewed via the Senate's audio and video archives when they are posted.
The Environment, Climate, and Legacy 03/21/2023 audio and video files are archived here. Friday's Transportation Committee hearing on the bill was simply a vote on the amendment for the appropriation that would pay for costs related to preparing for the transfer.
Photo: A summer sun sets over the Minnesota River just upstream of the confluence with the Yellow Medicine River in the Upper Sioux Agency State Park. Bills recently introduced in the state Legislature call for transferring the park lands to the Upper Sioux Community. West Central Tribune file photo.
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