Toby's Tumblr

This may present the best news I’ve ever heard.  The Mdewakanton Sioux community, flush with casino profits, has begun a “shrewd chess game,” cutting off Shakopee developments, growth and expansion, slowly knitting back together their traditional territory.

Says Stan Ellison, the tribe’s land manager, “Our staff is going through original surveyors’ notes, establishing old boundaries between prairie, forest, wetlands. We are returning native grasses to land that has been farmed since the 1870s. A park, to the tribe, is not a soccer field. It is restored prairie where members can hunt birds, and forests where we can turn maple sap into syrup, and show our kids that syrup isn’t something you buy at Cub.”  They’ve even started using burning again to promote the growth of native plants over European invasives!  Thanks for the good news, Patricia! - Jason