Big changes are in the works for Upper Sioux Agency State Park near Granite Falls — changes that are likely to start with new ownership.

State officials are poised to transfer ownership of the park to the Dakota tribe of the Upper Sioux reservation. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is not contesting the proposal, according to media reports.

The DNR favors an ownership change because of extensive upgrades that are needed at the park. It has faced road washouts and campground flooding. The visitor center needs a major building renovation.

Upper Sioux Dakota representatives have noted that the land is considered sacred ground. The tribe doesn’t consider it an appropriate place for a campground.

Hopefully, it will be maintained as an historic site that’s open to the public. It would be a good thing to have a cultural center that reflects Dakota heritage. It’s bound to be well-managed under tribal ownership given what’s been accomplished in recent years at the Upper Sioux Community.

The proposed ownership change reflects a changing mindset in the way we take care of our resources. Had we known in the 19th century what we know now, we might have made different decisions as the area was homesteaded.

We maybe didn’t need to plow up almost every square inch of native prairie. We perhaps didn’t need to drain almost all of the wetlands.

It would have been good if things could have somehow turned out differently in relations between white settlers and Native Americans. It was simply a collision of cultures, one based on hunter gatherer tradition and the other based on mercantilism, farms, railroads, formal government, court systems and property rights.

As we judge the past, it’s important that we don’t impose present-day values on past actions. In the time period of homesteading, we felt destined to tame the prairie. It seemed like the right thing to do.

I’m a fifth-generation descendant of a homesteader. My great great grandfather, Frank Muchlinski, obtained 160 acres in the southwest quarter of Section 34, Hansonville Township, Lincoln County, between Hendricks and Wilno.

I’m proud of great great Grandpa Frank. He took the risk of moving to the Midwest in order to create a better life for himself, his children and his descendents. I wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t done that.

He homesteaded his land in 1893. It was several years after the Battle of Wounded Knee, the last major resistance of Native American tribes. It was the year of the Columbian Exposition, which touted the progress being made in farming and industry.

It corresponds to when historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier closed, which meant the goal of branching out from coast to coast had been accomplished.

Homesteads were lawfully granted by the United States government. In the local area it was reaffirmed by Minnesota statehood in 1858, the national Homestead Act in 1862 and the formation of local counties in the early 1870s.

It’s a story of taking away the Native American way of life. It’s a story of prejudice, including the often cited example from Laura Ingalls Wilder about how her father Charles Ingalls said that the only good Indian was a dead Indian.

We can consider it wrong by our modern standards, but it’s not good scholarship to simply condemn the settlers and to think that they were bad people. We need to understand their situation.

They feared what they didn’t know. The Native Americans seemed like savages. Their war tradition of scalping enemies was considered barbaric.

It doesn’t matter if we like what happened or don’t like it. It simply happened. It’s part of a long-term historic trend that continues today as far as how economies of scale displace tradition. Main Street businesses throughout much of rural America still experience it.

We often say that it’s sad, but there’s almost an inevitability that it’s going to happen. The only way trends will change is if the public decides to give a higher level of support to the traditional; if it comes into play with our retail decisions, our land use planning and other parts of everyday life.

An ownership change at Upper Sioux State Park might go down in history as an example of changing priorities, an example of how preservation of natural resources and cultural tradition is desirable. It might become a step toward finding a modern day balance.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent