Pockets of land around Lake Minnetonka served for thousands of years as the sites of sacred burial for the Dakota people.

Now, some of that soil sits in giant piles outside Tonka Bay City Hall as local officials and tribal leaders try to figure out how to most respectfully handle material that was unearthed during a road construction project.

“There’s two interests here: One is to build a roadway that is going to last, and (to) treat these burial remains with the respect they deserve,” said John Bradford with the consulting firm WSB, who serves as the city’s engineer. “And, we want to do both.”

Striking that balance can prove difficult, in part because tribes weren’t always consulted when the roads, sewers and water systems were installed decades ago amid booming suburban growth.

The infrastructure has aged since then and, as it comes due for replacement, cities are reckoning with the decisions made before modern laws protected Indigenous graves.

“We’re all in difficult positions trying to be respectful and trying to do things in a good way after so much destruction and desecration,” said Samantha Odegard, a tribal historic preservation officer for the Upper Sioux Community, which is working with Tonka Bay officials. “But, obviously, it’s harder on us because it’s our sites, our relatives that were most directly affected.”

Much of what is now the Twin Cities metro area served as homeland for the Dakota people for thousands of years, Odegard said. But many Indigenous people were forced out after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

When people flocked to the suburbs a century later, many cities installed new roadways, water and sewer lines to support the growing communities. Current laws requiring officials to consult with tribes and return remains and sacred objects weren’t yet in place. Some sites were disturbed.

“We’re trying to protect what’s there, but doing it in that context, that is very difficult,” Odegard said. “It’s harder to pinpoint exactly what areas needed to be avoided or have certain guidelines followed.”

The locations of some cemeteries are hard to trace and, when they are known, their locations are closely guarded to prevent looting and desecration.

So city officials across the state increasingly find themselves working with consultants and archaeologists as they prepare for major construction projects, with mixed success.

The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa spent nearly five years on recovery efforts after state crews disturbed burial grounds in Duluth during bridge construction. Restoration crews worked for three years in Minnetonka after a county road project inadvertently destroyed some mounds. Chanhassen officials recently brought in consultants to do an archaeological review of Lake Ann Park Preserve before doing additional work there.

Tonka Bay Mayor Adam Jennings said his city is working on a roughly $8 million project aimed at replacing nearly 20% of the city’s roads, water and sewer lines, including along County Road 19. Many of those systems, he said, were installed in the 1960s and 1970s.

“We were experiencing a significant number of water breaks and we just needed a new one,” he said. “It reached the end of its useful life.”

City officials began consulting with tribes a couple years ago, including on plans for what they would do if they encountered sacred soils.

Odegard and Cheyanne St. John, a tribal historic preservation officer for the Lower Sioux Indian Community, said there were concerns about whether crews followed the proper guidelines. City officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the tribal members’ concerns.

In an earlier interview, Bradford, the city engineer, said crews initially planned to take out about two feet of soil and bring in sand to help stabilize the roadway.

“I was under the impression, correctly or not, that we would just haul the soils off-site, and everybody was OK with that,” he said.

But when they brought in a new cultural resources consultant partway through the project, he said that person recommended contacting the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. Bradford said they heard through that process that some tribes wanted to keep the soil in a cemetery.

For now, the soil sits in towering heaps outside City Hall, surrounded by barriers meant to guard it from erosion and people trying to carry it off.

The piles drew questions from curious residents in a public meeting earlier this fall. Some wanted to know why the piles were outside City Hall and how long they might be there. Others wanted to know how it might affect the budget.

Officials have said it’s cheaper to store the soil there than to delay construction. They’re not sure on the timeline for moving it.

“It’s like anything else when you’re in politics. You get all kinds of questions from all kinds of residents, and you do your best to answer,” Jennings said. “A vast majority of the time, people get it.”

In the meantime, city officials and tribal leaders are trying to finalize a plan for moving the soil and trying to explain to people both its significance and why tampering with it would be a crime.

“I know that there is a lot of, sometimes, contention around the inconvenience of how project work is done,” St. John said. “But I think, oftentimes, the public is just not aware of how sensitive these locations are to our people. And we’re not an extinct culture. Those are our relatives that called those places home.”

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