Heaps of soil that have been sitting outside Tonka Bay City Hall are en route to a new location as crews build mounds to replace sacred Dakota burial sites that were disturbed during a construction project.
Tonka Bay City Administrator CJ Holl said crews have begun hauling roughly 5,300 square yards of soil to a new spot near the intersection of Pleasant Avenue and Lilah Lane. There, they will shape it, plant topsoil and install a sign warning people it’s protected land. The whole process is expected to unfold over a few weeks.
“It has been slow progress getting to the point where we can actually move the soils,” Holl said. “This is one of the most complicated projects I’ve ever seen.”
Crews hired by Tonka Bay were working on a roughly $8 million project aimed at replacing aging roads, water and sewer lines when they unearthed soil from multiple tribes’ burial sites. That soil sat in towering heaps outside City Hall for months as local leaders worked with state and federal agencies to try to find a solution that could work for tribal members and residents.
In public meetings, some residents pushed back on the plan, saying they were tired of construction, wanted more environmental assessments conducted or wanted more details on how officials would protect the site from desecration. Other residents said they supported the plan to build new burial mounds.
When the work is complete, Holl said the burial mounds will cover less than one acre on an 11.5-acre site. Some will be round while others will be elongated, which Holl said was part of an effort to reflect the variety that would have traditionally been found in the area.
Many of the mounds will be about 8 feet high, though some will appear closer to 5 feet because crews were able to dig into the ground in some spots, Holl said.
“They’ll essentially look like small hills back there,” he said, adding that crews are working with tribal representatives to select “historically native and significant types of cover” to plant on top of the mounds.
