Minneapolis to Shut Down Off-Leash Dog Park Believed to be Native American Burial Site
Dogs can still walk around the supposed burial site, they just can’t do so off of a leash.
Dogs will no longer be allowed to roam free at a Minneapolis park because there is some chance Native Americans may be buried there.
Last week, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board voted to close down the off-leash area of the Minnehaha Regional Park because it “is now believed to be a Native American burial site,” CBS reported. However, a 2025 archaeological assessment did not conclude that human remains were present at the site, as Alpha News MN noted.
The resolution does not stop Fido and Spot from peeing on the supposed burial site or clawing at the ground.
Instead, the Minneapolis parks department announced on June 18, following the vote, that it will “decommission the off-leash recreation area no later than Dec. 31, 2026, or sooner if feasible.”
“The area within Minnehaha Regional Park identified as a dog park area is not closing and will remain open to the public,” the board wrote. “This change will only affect off-leash dog use.”
The announcement continued:
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board recognizes that the Minnehaha Off-Leash Recreation Area is meaningful to many residents and dog owners. At the same time, this land is part of the broader Mni Owe Sni/Coldwater Spring area, a place of deep cultural, spiritual, historical and archaeological significance to Dakota people and other Tribal Nations.
Last week’s vote, which followed a separate resolution calling for the change, sparked some passionate debate.
“We’re in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. It does seem obscene that we have only one safe area to recreate with our dogs in the water,” one man said.
Maggie Lorenz with the Wakan Tiki Center had a different view: “I think we have an opportunity to become a model for how to rectify centuries of wrongdoing.”
Some took a stronger, anti-white stance during the meeting.
“Imagine that area before the white man, before the pilgrims, pioneers and settlers, the extreme white Christian terrorists,” Mike Forcia (pictured) said.
WATCH: Multiple outbursts as the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board voted 8-1 Tuesday night to close the popular Minnehaha Off-Leash Dog Park
Supporters of closing the park say it is too spiritually significant to Native Americans to continue allowing dogs to roam free.… pic.twitter.com/6OyFLb9Qdw
— Alpha News (@AlphaNews) June 18, 2026
The Post Millennial published longer comments from Forcia, including a comparison of the dog park to concentration camps. At least this time, Forcia decided to peacefully protest – in June 2020, he took it upon himself to tear down a statue of Christopher Columbus, which earned him a glowing profile in Smithsonian Magazine.
He said:
That park is being closed. Sorry about that. Get used to it. But you have no say. Imagine what the Dakota were going through. Beautiful. And then they hit. Turned it into a concentration camp. And, um, you think of… Auschwitz, and Birkenau. Would you like to see a dog park in those places? Those are sacred places now. So really, you guys have no say in this whatsoever. That park is being closed. Sorry about that. Get used to it. But you have no say.
A woman named “Erica Crazy Hawk” also reportedly kept interrupting the hearing, as The Post Millennial reported.
After she spoke, she kept shouting at another audience member, as video from Alpha News MN shows.
At least one woman held up a sign that said “no dog is illegal.”
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Comments
Uh oh, somebody is on the warpath!
Before even reading the article, I thought of the “buried Native American children” in Canada who had allegedly died at a government school (that turned out to be a complete fabrication). Sure enough, no sign of burials in the park.
But why stop dogs from running loose there while still allowing them leashed access? This makes no sense at all, except as a power play by NA activists. Dogs were the good friends of Native Americans, and dead Indians would probably be comforted and even amused to know that their friends, the dogs, are frolicking above them.
Not to mention, dogs were a delicious part of the indigenous cuisine. Indians loved dog!
How ridiculous
I have it on good authority that Chief Learing Bull is buried directly below Walz’s office.
SHUT! IT! DOWN!
“Believed to be”?!?!?!
Yes, “believed to be” because the Minnesota State Archeologist apparently will not do a proper job and determine if Native American remains actually exist in the area.
An investigation might show there are no bodies buried there – and then the virtue-signaling loses its focus. Better to make uninformed speculation and rumors the basis for decisions.
All they have to do is some GPR or other sensing to see if there are signs of burials.
Sure, why not?
Canada parlayed “believed to be” into a five-year pogrom against missionary schools.
“Imagine that area before the white man, before the pilgrims, pioneers and settlers, the extreme white Christian terrorist.”
Extreme white Christian terrorists? You mean the people who introduced you stone age people to the wheel, the concept of roads, who provide you with electricity, automobiles, telephones, computers and cell phones? Those evil people? You can have your dog park. Just give up everything the terrorists gave you and go back to living the way you did.
In fairness there weren’t really large animals capable of ‘pulling a wagon/cart’ in North America so a wheel was less necessary. With a low population hunting, fishing and slash/burn agriculture for semi mobile groups within a specific region was sufficient to support them.
That said I agree with you about the folks complaining about ‘colonization/Western Civilization’. They never seem willing to remove themselves from it’s benefits or abandon the general prosperity, safety, security by packing their crap, renouncing their Citizenship and moving to some underdeveloped 3rd World location where they could implement all their goofy policy ideas.
Llamas can pull wagons. Dogs, too. And while it took Europeans a while to figure it out, there’s always the wheelbarrow.
One reason I specified North America. Not many Llamas running around outside of the Andes today much less pre Columbian North America.
Can dogs pull a cart? Sure. Is it efficient? Not really. If it was then given the alternative options of horses, mules, donkey, oxen folks would use dogs instead. (Yes some weirdos use them but today that’s largely motivated by reactionary mindset to retain a cultural trait that was itself not done by choice but from lack of alternative).
Bottom line is the lack of large draft animal (dogs ain’t primarily draft animals) in N America made the wheel less useful/important to.develop. No wheeled wagons or carts means roads with ditches and a crown for drainage are unnecessary. Especially given a low population density which didn’t need to transport large amounts of food. As for ‘roads’ being ‘the’ marker of civilization…. I live on a dirt ‘road’ though strictly speaking it doesn’t meet the definition of ‘road’ b/c it lacks a crown to drain water off nor ditches to carry the surface water drainage. Not unusual at all even today. Heck even in England after the American Revolution ‘roads’ were still a haphazard affair in the countryside with local landowners more/less doing it themselves either independently or when more traffic was possible grouping together to create private toll roads.
Wheelbarrow? Bruh go push a wheelbarrow up the Appalachian trail and let me know how it went as you traveled from Georgia to Maine. Heck go push it across the Plains States along the Interstate. A low population density doesn’t require large scale agriculture to support it …which means far, far less need to develop a wheel, especially if there’s no true draft animals available to pull a wagon/cart nor need for a dang road for the wheeled conveyance to travel upon.
The point is that most native American cultures didn’t even have the wheel. (Some Mesoamerican cultures were aware of it, but used them only on children’s toys and did not apply them generally to do real work.) That means no handcarts, wheel barrows, or the like. (Wheel barrows would have been of particular use to the mound-building cultures in what is now the United States’ Midwest.)
Native American societies had Stone Age level technology. If we’re going to excuse the lack of the wheel for not having beasts that would have allowed the wheel’s exploitation, how do we do the same with other technologies in which they were far behind Europe (as well as being far behind many Middle Eastern, North African, and Asian societies).
The “no beast of burden” argument falls flat for two reasons:
1. Human-powered carts and wagons pre-date the use of draft animal-powered wheeled vehicles. (Wagons that use beasts for motive power are mechanically more complex and therefore followed human-powered carts which were simpler to build.)
2. Cultures that had/have beasts of burden also used/use human-powered carts and wains. (Making the point that human-powered carts are useful for some purposes even when draft animals are available. The existence or non-existence of draft animals has no bearing the the existence or non-existence of human-powered carts.)
I trained my first Doberman Susie through UDT, one of the subcommands being “hold.” Just fold up her leash and tell her to hold it, and she’s holding her own leash, walking on heel next to me. That might get around the new restrictions.
Why not put a casino there?
More like “claimed” to be, rather than “believed” to be.
No, based on the people involved, I don’t believe them.
So, they’re saying the indigenous people only allowed dogs in the area if they were leashed to keep dogs from peeing on grandma.
If they did, White people must follow that tradition.
However, if the native people didn’t have a leash law at their cemetery, White people ought to follow the native ways and let the dogs roam free.
Is there any ‘minority’ ass left un-kissed or pandered to?
Yes, there are – those that haven’t yet been invented by the Left.
What now, they’re afraid Benji might dig up someone’s remains?
The dog park is (or “will have been”) just north of the area which used to be administered by the US Bureau of Mines Twin Cities Research Center. That area included Camp Coldwater Spring which was the original water source for Fort Snelling, with an old wagon trail going from the spring to the Fort. When they shut down the Research Center the local quasi-Indians demanded that the property be turned over to their tribal administration because it was (of course) “sacred ground”.
But that tribe hadn’t been there for very long, since their war of genocidal extermination of the PREVIOUS tribe had been successful and driven the others out. One of their more hysterically funny claims was that the oak trees were “sacred trees, hundreds of years old” when there wasn’t an oak tree in the area more than 90 years old (a small grove had been planted by white settlers, and spread).
Use Gurgle Maps and take a look at the area. It’s just north of the MSP airport and the Camp Coldspring is labeled at the parking lot, with the small pond just south of it being the spring. Take a look at the structures originally build by the soldiers at Fort Snelling, and tell me that there is any chance that this was built by the local autochthones (yet another fraudulent claim they’ve made).
It’s BS (not turtles) all the way down.
Patently absurd. Just put up a sign: Please let your pet know that s/he is
sh***ing on a Native American burial site and ask your pet to show some respect.
Stupidity demands fair and balanced stupidity situations like this.
Hmmm – me thinks that the leaders of this movement are confusing Muslim culture with Native American Culture.
Native Americans loved their dogs and they were involved in every aspect of life including burial rites
In Native American culture, dogs were revered as esteemed members of the community, serving practical and spiritual purposes. They aided in hunting, protection, and companionship, while also being perceived as sacred creatures with supernatural abilities. Dogs were often viewed as messengers between the living and the spirit world, believed to protect from evil spirits and bring good fortune. Their significance extended to ceremonies and rituals, where they were seen as intermediaries communicating with gods and spirits. Furthermore, dogs were often buried with their owners, as they were thought to accompany them on their journey to the afterlife.
Not enough info or facts to form an opinion.
As noted, can they actually validate? Cuz no objection if it’s a legit burial site.
I’m mixed on the pet owner plight. I once had 5 acres for my dogs to run in my slice of paradise in a blue state hell hole. I never had to take the dogs off property. Now in my red state paradise, they are crammed into a yard the size of a basketball court. I frisbee run the hell out of them, but I still like to take them to a park where I can off leash them.
We must honor the dinosaurs that came before.
Are they going to stop all the wildlife from roaming free in this area? What about cats? Are cats banned too or is it only dogs. Is it okay if we bus the homeless up and turn them loose in the park, without leashes of course.
Forcia seems really, really pleased to repeat “you have no say” ad nauseam. Would he happen to be a Democrat?.
I hope everyone realizes that it’s the indigenous Grievance People, (or Nukha̱klo Okla in their native tongue) who buried their entitled and complaining dead in this area.
Probably.
Or near here, anyway.
Or they would have had they known it would later become a dog park.
If you want to shut down some thing, isn’t it easier just to claim there is an endangered vole on the property.