Creating Big Elk Lake Regional Park: A Collaborative Process

About the Program

Category: Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation

Year: 2023

Sherburne County Parks and Recreation partnered with the Trust for Public Land, Upper Sioux Community, Lower Sioux Indian Community, Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Prairie Island Indian Community, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Indian Community, and a local property owner to create a vision and acquire 430 acres of land for a new county park, called Big Elk Lake Regional Park. Despite having been used as a farmstead over the past century, evidence of the landscape’s historic and pre-historic use as a village, burial grounds, and sacred landscape by Native Americans was overwhelming. Pursuing public ownership of the property gave Sherburne County the opportunity to protect these cultural resources so this rich history could be honored and shared with future visitors. More importantly this undertaking ultimately restored a connection between Indigenous people and their ancestral past.  Understanding the land’s significance to Native American Tribes, the planning effort was intentionally collaborative and grounded in listening and respect. The park’s planning process and successful land acquisition catalyzed relationships between Sherburne County and local Tribal Nations, relationships that will continue to grow in the future as the entities work together to realize the vision for this sacred landscape.