Deep Waters, Deep Connections
Indigenous wisdom on our relationship with the Earth and protecting the Great Lakes
Photo credit: oilandwaterdontmix.org
The last weekend of August, I went up north in Michigan for a weekend of activities related to the water. In the Great Lakes, water protectors are campaigning to decommission the Line 5 oil and gas pipeline which passes through the straits of Mackinac. The saga is long and complicated so instead of summarizing it myself, I’m going to share what’s already been written:
In the 1950s, without tribal consultation nor seeking public input, the State of Michigan granted Enbridge a lease and permission to build the original Line 5 dual pipeline in spite of the risk of oil spills in the Great Lakes. In 2021, Enbridge seeks to build a tunnel to house a new segment of the Line 5 oil pipeline to continue transporting non-consumer oil and gas products from one part of Canada to another with little financial benefit to local residents. Meanwhile, Enbridge is ignoring that Governor Whitmer terminated the easement that permits the dual pipeline to cross the Straits of Mackinac. Enbridge is now trespassing as it continues to operate Line 5 in violation of the termination notice.
The future of the pipeline has gone back and forth between the courts and planning commissions in Michigan. The Nessel v. Enbridge decision currently awaits hearing in Michigan’s 30th Circuit Court. Additionally, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) recently closed submissions of written comments regarding Enbridge’s Line 5 Wisconsin Segment Relocation project.
Activists are currently in a stage of building community and raising awareness in preparation for more intense times of resistance, should the future require it.
We started the weekend with a Friday evening potluck at the campground. Before we ate, we were cleansed with bashkodejiibik (sage) and nibi (water) from several origins was passed to us from a copper vessel. Water protector Jannan Cornstalk led us in a prayer to the four directions.
The next day we crossed over the Mackinac Bridge to St. Ignace to participate in the “Pipe Out Paddle Up Flotilla to Shut Down Line 5” on Lake Huron.
The gathering started with a ceremony of thanksgiving to the water. In addition to the bashkodejiibik and nibi rituals from the night before, we all gave offerings of asemaa (tobacco) to the water. I also touched my pounamu to the water, offering its strength and protection from Aotearoa.
As the paddlers climbed into their kayaks, canoes and the jiimaan (see my drawing below), six men of all ages sat in a circle around a large drum and sang traditional songs. Because of my shoulder injury, I wasn’t able to paddle out, but I enjoyed the energy from the shore and drew this of the jiimaan - a large voyager canoe.
After the paddle out, we drove to Petoskey where the annual Water is Life festival was taking place all afternoon. Looking over Little Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan, we communed with other water, wildlife and native representatives and a lineup of talented musicians.
After this big day of public events, the water protectors used Sunday to recover and get to know each other more. It was on Sunday that I got a chance to talk to Tera about the significance of this weekend. (Note: This interview was edited for clarity and length.)
Katy: Can you start out by telling us a bit about yourself and passions?
Tera: Aanii boozhoo. Hi hello.
Tera John nindizhinikaaz… Maadweyaashiikwe nindizhinikaaz. My government name is Tera John, but I’m also known as the woman that speaks the language of the wind.
Makwa nindoodem. I’m bear clan. In old-school ways we didn’t have family names, you were born into a clan system as your family. You learn by going to work and being at the elbows of your aunties and uncles and making mistakes and getting corrected. You learn how to serve your people, what you want to do, what your gift utility was to a community.
Kchi Wiikwedong nindoonjibaa. I’m from what we call present-day Grand Traverse area. We call it “Around the big bay” because we name all our places after the way the water moves around it. It serves two purposes. First, it gives you directions… if you know the interstate, intersections of where you are, you’re not going to get lost.
And two, in the very language of speaking of your home, it reminds you of what needs to be maintained to be safe and happy, thriving.
I work in Indigenous Land Management techniques, all over Turtle Island. I’m very happy to be able to come home to my own tribe and be able to work on my own treaty territories where I can work on our places that still hold the names in my language of the original place and still be able to speak it and understand.
It’s a very privileged place to be from because I realize that not all indigenous people have that or have the comfort to be able to learn it.
I also am working on tribal food sovereignty. This is the idea that you cannot truly be free and make your own choices about your movements and lives until you can feed yourself.
I am about saving the world because I’m in a unique position where I’ve traveled around and offered my asemaa (tobacco) to elders and academics and people in these spaces to learn what it was like before and to understand how things were different and how we managed these spaces and are protective of abundance.
This land loved us just as much as we loved her. This is our home and we were intended to be here.
Myself and Tera, photo by Bahaar
Our stories, even in English, can’t be translated almost into real, tangible, even English, definitions. Like, we have a word for DNA which is “blood memory”. We talk about that mishipeshu and that thunderbird, even in our art, all the way back, they were never separated because that’s a science teaching. That’s that water spirit and that atmosphere. They can’t exist apart from each other. That’s a closed system. That depicts that relationship of that world from the very beginning. That balance that needs to exist for us to even think about being here. That relationship is always in adjustment with those storms and those air pressures and those clouds - that we can breath and live here. And it’s billions of years and still adjusting to take care of us.
We also have teachings about the water in Michigan. It’s that membrane around that Turtle’s heart. Just like yours is. It protects us. It insulates us from climate change even. That’s that protective water around the heart, that Mshiikenh - It means turtle. It still holds the names.
We talk about water holding a memory and being medicine. You are seventy to eighty percent water. If you take in tainted water that’s going to become part of you. We talk about how it’s a DNA exchange when you are touching water.
I’m working with a grant right now with our natural resources to do eDNA testing with river silt. If done correctly, we can tell the populations that had interactions in that water for 2 million years. Science is now coming around to realize that those things that we’ve talked about are true.
There is a Western view of commodification, exploitation and exit. And that applies for our water too.
We talk about things like harvesting a basket made from reeds. When someone asks “Oh, how long did it take you to make that basket?”, it might’ve taken me so many hours to weave that basket. But it also took hours to pound it down and harvest the tree and all the labor to split them. But it also took me hours to learn how to weave like that. And it took my teacher all the hours to learn the experience to teach and then it took that tree a hundred years to grow. So that basket is two hundred years of effort.
We are all built on the backs of the meekest of us. We think of the trophic cascade as from the smallest. From that muskrat that had that earth in his hand. He was the weak little guy. But we are built on the sacrifices of the least of us. And until we remember that, we can’t move forward.
But we still have the relationship with these spaces. That, if respected, and truly allowed to tell our own stories, we are in a unique position to be able to save this before the end. The good thing is that the indigenous populations of this planet know how to do that. We have 80% of the world’s biodiversity. Every food system, except for the transport of it, has come from indigenous hands and teachings and knowledge.
Katy: Wow, you’ve already answered like the first three questions, and I love that, because I asked you to introduce yourself but in your answer you demonstrated the Earth is part of you. My next questions were going to be “What is your relationship to water?” and “Why should the general public be concerned and take a role in water management?” You told us how everything is so connected, so it’s like - where would you stop?
Tera: You are 70% water, it’s like “DUH!”. Of course you should care.
There are working models. It’s just that people don’t stop to think about the effort before it gets to them and all of the energies. When we talk about the energy of that tree growing into that basket. That’s the work of that land and that tree to grow and the sun that it used for food, and the air. All the nutrients make those tree leaves different and the tree rings different. The weather went into that. Those rings have different densities in those trees.
We’re joining something already in motion. We are not the top of the pyramid. We are the very last one’s here. We need to adjust to merging in traffic. You might be like “Oh, I got this”, but if you don’t adjust for the other energies going in, you’re going to fail … bad.
Katy: That makes so much sense. Next, can I ask you: What did we do this weekend and why was it significant?
Tera: There is a lot of Western society and Western culture that we have been sold on that’s competitive. That teaches you to be the best at one thing or to think about things as a right way and …. that’s not how you build community.
Our teachings are very much “you can’t do it alone” I can’t… push and pull at the same time. I can’t tap trees on my own. These are things that are integral to who we are and interacting with this land. But you can't do it alone. You are not by yourself.
Things like this build community because we come together and in that circle teaching we all have a different perspective of that middle focus. But we all have a front-row seat and we are all just as important because each view needs to be contributed to see a whole.
That's what we are doing here. We are project bonding. We are building things together. Because when you can look across you can traumatize communities who don't do therapy well, who don't do talk therapy. We can come together in places and build together, make things together. And that heals generations. Especially when it's on the land and in relation like that. It is coming back to this place that we call home - but together. Because you can look across and understand that you've made it through something. You've created this. You might not always get along. But you understand and build out from there.
We don't have disposable communities. We don't have the resources to get up and move away. If we do someone wrong or if we don't act right, we have to be held accountable because we only have each other.
We're saving the world! That's what we're doing!
Katy: What gives you hope in this struggle?
Tera: The same thing that gives me my voice. I can look and see that we have a generation of children that has these stories and this knowledge and doesn't have to go seek it. We've done the work. My son has these stories. He knows these things. He has this land. He's the first generation that does this.
We're the first generation that has our babies. That's wild. And now we're in a place where we can tell our own stories that are being observed or talked about in an anthropological sense. If we are allowed to do so, I guarantee it will change things. Let me show you how to love this. It's way more beautiful than you even know.
Katy: What advice do you have to people that are concerned about our planet but don't quite know where to begin?
Tera: Don't give up. There are places and there are times that doing this work feels lonely because you are up against an entire society that tells you it needs to be a different way or that doesn't value what you are doing or doesn't see the work and the effort and the wearing down because your values aren't respected - the things that you hold dear aren't loved. That's a hard world to be in.
I'm thinking about my babies.... That's what gives me hope. Thinking about my babies and seeing them being able to move without the baggage that they didn't have to pick up.
Katy: Those are all of the questions I prepared, but I have another one I’d like to ask for myself. Before we started recording, you mentioned some things about the meaning of “work” and how skewed it is in today’s society. I was wondering if you have some advice for me as I try to navigate this concept going forward.
Tera: This capitalistic, these western society things - the systems that we've been sold on are not serving us. But the good news is that we don't have to keep investing in them. We don't have to double down. There is another way. You can do what I did, which is learn those things that you want to learn and find where they fit. Find a way and your people will find you. Be so unapologetically standing as a beacon that it will work. When you know you're right. You're right.
During the interview, Tera’s friend Bahaar braided her hair. In Anishinaabe culture, braiding is a very intimate act as hair connects one to their ancestors and heritage. It also felt highly symbolic that Tera’s hair was being braided as she told me how we are connected to the earth and its systems, and about the importance of gathering. I took a photo of the braids and, after returning from the gathering, turned it into the following watercolor.
While my group took down camp and headed out on Sunday, I should note that many water protectors carried the weekend through to Labor Day Monday. Every year, roughly 30,000 people walk across the 5-mile Mackinac bridge, which is otherwise closed to pedestrians. The remaining dedicated water protectors set up a booth near the entrance to the bridge and raised awareness with the walkers with a variety of activities such as a photo booth and a map for people to indicate their “Water Address”.
Except where otherwise noted, all photos and art are my own.