Band calls for burial protections

Gathering last week capped cemetery saga that began in 2017

The tribal chairman of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa called for new protections for Native American burial grounds during a community gathering last week.

Speaking alongside the St. Louis River, near a site where burial grounds were disturbed by a state highway project in 2017, Kevin Dupuis was joined by a crowd of more than 125 mostly Indigenous people in the Fond du Lac neighborhood in Duluth on Friday, Sept. 30.

Every day in North America, sacred grounds are desecrated somewhere, Dupuis said.

"New laws, new regulations have to be put in place for the simple protections of the first inhabitants of this land," Dupuis said. "We're still the last ones to be protected, but the first ones on this continent. It's backwards and we need to figure out a way to make it right."

Minnesota Department of Transportation officials were also on hand, pledging support in the wake of a bridge project that started out at $3.1 million and has escalated beyond $20 million following yearslong efforts to recover burial remains and artifacts. A new bridge project, on hold since the desecration, is scheduled for 2024.

"We needed to pause and convene with the tribe," MnDOT commissioner Nancy Daubenberger said. "It was a tragic, tragic day and we never want that to happen again."

The burial grounds in the Fond du Lac neighborhood have been disturbed repeatedly. First by a railroad project in 1869, and then by roadway construction in 1921, 1937 and, finally, in 2017.

Tribal councilor Roger Smith also noted further debasement of the burial grounds along Minnesota Highway 23. While tribal workers sifted through soils to recover remains and artifacts, he said they located a modern-day utility pipe through the cemetery which had been trenched and buried by manual shoveling.

"People had to have seen (the remains)," Smith told the crowd, which listened to a procession of speakers and joined in a luncheon.

Dupuis contrasted "grave protection principles" governing other cemeteries to the lack of Native American protections, saying he'd be charged with a felony if he tried to dig remains out of any other type of cemetery. This, despite the fact that burial ceremonies across religions and ethnicities are all culturally important and aimed at one outcome: "sending people home," he said.

"We're telling them and their families that they're going to be OK, and they're not going to be bothered," Dupuis added.

Remains disturbed by a bulldozer in 2017 have since been reinterred. The Band and its people decided over a series of public meetings to replace the cemetery ground with another one that's simply marked. Partially completed with more landscaping to come, the new cemetery is now outlined by a stone wall and walking path along Highway 23.

"I'm grateful for all of the people that handled our ancestors with care and had to dig through the dirt and handled them with respect," tribal councilor Robert Abramowski said. "I'm grateful they finally get to rest in peace and were treated with the respect and dignity they deserved all along."

Christine Carlson, 74, attended the gathering wearing the buckskin dress she reserves for special occasions. She and her son, Keane Carlson, were the first to report the desecration by alerting a tribal spiritual advisor on a day they witnessed excavation at the site in May 2017. The new bridge over Mission Creek had been ordered following the 2012 Duluth flood.

"It needed to be fixed," said Carlson, who grew up in the Fond du Lac neighborhood. "But I had no clue they were going to go through the cemetery."

Carlson, a tribal historian who'd done work outlining previous desecrations, said it was her destiny to bring the Fond du Lac neighborhood "into the light."

She and others described the Fond du Lac neighborhood, at the intersection of State highways 23 and 210, as a special residing place for the Ojibwe people and other tribes before them. Later came trappers, settlers, even a fort. It's long been documented as an important neighborhood in the advent of Duluth itself.

Carlson remarked on what a "majestic place" the neighborhood is, and was asked if she trusted a violation wouldn't happen again.

"There's always hope," she said. "I want to think that there's hope. It's in the past now. It's done."