Transcripts

LEIF ENGER: It's almost noon, and the Wilkinson's are setting up camp, zipping the screens on their faded canvas pop-up, getting out the bug dope, and most importantly to the two little girls, mining the cooler for sandwiches. David Wilkinson says this peaceful campground is his family's favorite.

DAVID WILKINSON: It's clean and close. Not overcrowded at all. Never had a crowd problem.

LEIF ENGER: Actually, it might be a little more crowded than you think. Like most campers at Mille Lacs Kathio, the Wilkinsons never thought about the small domed hills dotted around them.

DAVID WILKINSON: No, sir.

LEIF ENGER: They look natural enough like little drumlins dropped by glaciers. Learning you're camped in a cemetery can make you blink and grope for words.

DAVID WILKINSON: I didn't know anything about it. It's a little disrespectful. I just did not. I think it's a good idea to move it, yeah.

[LAUGHS]

That's remarkable.

LEIF ENGER: It probably shouldn't be so surprising. Before European settlement, the area around Mille Lacs was one of the largest population centers in what's now Minnesota. In fact, adjacent to these burial mounds is the well-documented site of an ancient village, a village already ancient when Father Louis Hennepin visited there in the year 1680. Nevertheless, state employees didn't know about the mounds when they designed this campground in the 1960s. Park naturalist Jim Cummings.

JIM CUMMINGS: One of the individuals who had designed the campground, said, well, you know, we thought we had done the right thing. We really wanted to do the right thing. So we did go and we asked representatives from the local American-Indian community. And they said, well, gosh, that place down on Ogeechee Lake is probably a pretty good place for you to campground because it isn't near any of our cemetery areas.

Well, of course, the people who they had asked the questions were the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. But it was through the excavations of the University of Minnesota that they discovered that there was perhaps somebody else who should be asked.

LEIF ENGER: That somebody else was the Mdewakanton Dakota tribe which had occupied the Mille Lacs area before the Ojibwe arrived. Inside park boundaries are more than 50 Dakota mounds covered with trees and deep undergrowth.

Though most visitors don't even recognize the mounds, Dakota elders have long chafed at the thought of vacationers ruckusing among the ancients. Chris Leith is a spiritual advisor from the Prairie Island Reservation who's happy the campground is being moved and sorry it's taken so long.

CHRIS LEITH: It makes me feel good to know that they are now respecting our burial sites. It seems as though it takes a long time to educate the people to just leave them be, just leave them as they are, do not disturb them.

LEIF ENGER: One reason for the delay was money. After all, the new campsites were barely finished when the state learned of the mounds and closing the popular new campground seemed out of the question. Another reason says naturalist Jim Cummings was the park's very abundance of buried history.

JIM CUMMINGS: Some at the time said, well, good luck. I mean, this is Kathio. Where are you going to find a place that people would want to camp where you're not disturbing an archaeological site?

[CLATTERING]

[CUTTING]

LEIF ENGER: It's not been easy. These brush-cutting park workers represent the tail end of a long and painstaking development. The past two summers, archaeologists led teams of students in excavating hundreds of test pits. It was archaeology in reverse, researchers squatting in the dirt hoping not to find something remarkable. Those pits yielding pottery shards or other artifacts were further examined and in some cases rejected as possible camp sites. Park officials have commended the Dakota Sioux for their forbearance.

The tribe probably could have invoked the Federal Cemetery Protection Act to force changes much earlier. The tribe's patience allowed the park to find the best possible alternative campsites, which, in turn, made it easier, Cummings says, to undertake the project for the right reasons.

JIM CUMMINGS: The question is one of respect. We would move this campground if it were encroaching that closely on a Swedish cemetery as well. Nobody's forcing us to move this campground, to close this campground or anything like that. This was an effort to right a wrong.

LEIF ENGER: Mille Lacs Kathio Park naturalist Jim Cummings. The new campground will be opened next spring at a cost of more than $500,000. Leif Enger, Mainstreet Radio.