Tribe getting piece of Minnesota back more than a century after ancestors died there

Golden prairies and winding rivers of a Minnesota state park also hold the secret burial sites of Dakota people who died as the United States failed to fulfill treaties with Native Americans more than a century ago. The state is taking the rare step of transferring the park with a fraught history back to a Dakota tribe, trying to make amends for events that led to a war and the largest mass hanging in U.S. history. The Upper Sioux Agency State Park in southwestern Minnesota spans a little more than 2 square miles (about 5 square kilometers) and includes the ruins of a federal complex where officers withheld supplies from Dakota people, leading to starvation and deaths.