PENNINGTON — What happens when a construction project reveals a culturally significant site?
Last year, Cass County’s highway department worked closely with Leech Lake’s Tribal Preservation Office for an archaeological investigation of potential Indigenous burial grounds before work completed on a county road near Ah Gwah Ching, south of Walker on the shores of Leech Lake. The Walker Pilot Independent reported no evidence of human remains or funerary items being discovered, allowing the project to proceed as planned.
Now, a bridge construction project near Bemidji faces an indefinite hiatus after utility work uncovered likely human remains in 2020. The Beltrami County Board is trying to decide how to move forward with an estimated $100,000 cost to take the next steps.
Minnesota became a U.S. territory before becoming a state, sharing geography with the ancestral homelands of Indigenous people along the way. The state was among the first to pass legislation affording equal treatment and protections to American Indian cemeteries and burial grounds. Passed in the 1970s, it became the framework the federal government would follow later in the 1990s.
Since then, work is ongoing to document the sites of ancient human remains and artifacts, repatriating them to the appropriate tribes as needed.
George Goggleye is a cultural resource manager for the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, working out of Bemidji. The Council has repatriated more than 2,000 human remains to tribes in and out of Minnesota since it was formed 50 years ago. He said it’s not rare to come across artifacts, especially near waterways, where people have always congregated.
"People that were here 2,000 to 4,000 years ago, they used those waterways either as a means to travel or as a means for subsistence,” he said.
Goggleye's office works closely with tribal preservation officers when approaching potential archaeological sites. The statewide Council acts as a museum, housing artifacts on behalf of the sovereign tribes. While ideally sites remain undisturbed, development and excavation have gone on regardless, especially in the early years of treaties.
In 1918, U.S. Steel moved the graves of nearly 200 ancestors of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, with the burial sites returned more than 100 years later.
"Back before the laws were enacted, people would dig and they probably would encounter things and they would just kind of like, ‘Oh, let's continue to do what we're doing,’” Goggleye said.
“So a lot of these places may not even have been registered or the whereabouts ... remain unknown because people have just built over the top of them.”
Beltrami County Highway Engineer Bruce Hasbargen recently presented a change in costs to the bridge project on the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway that has been in the works for over a decade. The Lady Slipper Scenic Byway meanders through lakes country from Cass Lake to Blackduck within the Chippewa National Forest, with interpretive sites and fishing piers among the lakes, forest and bogs. The route also shares geography with the ceded territories and reservation of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.
The byway committee acquired state, federal and even Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation funding for the planned bridge near Pennington to enhance safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.
But another $100,000 is now needed to fund archaeological work, after the remains discovery. The Leech Lake Tribal Preservation Office is now leading the project area, according to Hasbargen.
"[This will] figure out if it's an isolated burial site or what exactly is out there," Hasbargen said at a Sept. 16 work session. “Design-wise, potentially we could lengthen the bridge or relocate the bridge to avoid, if it's an isolated burial site. But we need to figure out what's there.”
Hasbargen said the plan includes ground-penetrating radar, cadaver dogs and using shovels to sift through materials, alongside oversight from the band. All of that come with a cost, he said.
The county has so far not committed any money to the project — only staff time and design.
"Do we proceed with this environmental, this cultural work, or do we table it until we'll potentially maybe the Scenic Byway community can help find a grant to cover those costs?” Hasbargen asked the Board of Commissioners. “Or maybe we just walk away from the project?”
Commissioner Tim Sumner, who also is a Red Lake band member, expressed his wish to see the project continue.
“It doesn't make sense to be so close to completion and then pump the brakes and halt ... the construction. It almost seems like, well, we're building a jail, right? So would we stop building a jail when we have three walls up?” Sumner asked.
"I would hope that the board would look for a way to find this $100,000. I mean, it seems like it's a small amount compared to what has already been invested into the project.”
Steve Ross of Pennington is president of the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway committee. He said in a Friday, Sept. 19, interview the group has raised over $700,000 for the project. He said the bridge would make an interpretive site on the banks of the Mississippi River much safer.
"The main reason we wanted to do it was because ... kids and people were on the highway bridge taking pictures, the kids were playing and fishing, and it's really a busy road,” Ross said. “There's a lot of truck traffic and boat traffic and people traffic.”
The county highway department has a dedicated fund for road improvement projects, generated from a road-specific county sales tax, that could be a potential source for the cultural work funding.
Commissioner John Carlson was among the consensus to keep the project on pause so the byway group could find more grant dollars.
“Right now, with our budget situation the way it is, I just don't see how we could spend another $100,000,” Carlson said. “Even if it's out of the road budget.”
Immediately following the work session, the board approved a preliminary budget and levy that proposes slashing funding for local libraries and the county’s museum.
Ross said the group will go back to its funding sources for additional extensions and requests, but he expressed some frustration with the long process.
“That was added monies that we weren't counting on having to do," Ross said. “We've got so much money for one thing and so much for the other.”
Commissioners are slated to hear a project update in the spring, with a general consensus on the Board to wait for potential new grant dollars for the cultural work.
