Great news for the Ho-Chunk tribe!

The federal government has given back almost 16-hundred acres of land it seized from ancestors in the Ho-Chunk Indian tribe. Tomorrow the tribe will hold a celebration of the land transfer, which involves property along the Wisconsin River at Baraboo.

Tribal president Jon Greendeer will speak at a ceremony, along with U-S Senate Democrat Tammy Baldwin and Randy Poelma of the Ho-Chunk’s environmental health department. There will also be a round dance, and public tours of the land — which will eventually be developed into a grazing area for bison. The transfer was part of a larger Defense Department bill passed by Congress last December. That was 16 years after the Ho-Chunk filed a claim for federal surplus lands.