At 7:00 a.m. on September 14, 2024, dozens of people in colorful skirts and dress pants begin gathering around a small brick duplex at the Michigan/Wisconsin state line in the westernmost Upper Peninsula, just down the road from a series of budget strip clubs and adult video stores. This may seem like a strange place for a Native American ceremony, but not so: just beneath the bridge flows the Montreal River, and anywhere with Nibi is sacred.

By 8:00 a.m., the crowd has swelled to over sixty, and Edith Bardo, former Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Bad River Tribe, descends the slick grassy slope to the river bank, where she gathers Nibi — the Anishinaabe word for "water" — into a small copper bucket. After singing to it a blessing in the Ojibwe language, she takes the first steps of the 31-mile Gichigaming Water Walk, which will conclude ten hours later with the Nibi being released into pristine waters of Lake Superior in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

“We pray for the Water because it cannot speak for itself. We let it know that we love it. We respect it. We care for it. We appreciate the life it brings forth. And we ask the Creator of all living things to protect it from harm. How that will happen, we don’t know, but we ask for it to happen.” — Edith Leoso, Member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Gichigaming Water Walk organizer

Thirty-one miles is a long way to walk for anyone. Fortunately, after a quarter-mile or so, Edith passes the copper bucket onto the next Water Carrier, who receives it with the words, "I'm doing this for the Water." Beside them, a similar exchange occurs between Eagle Staff Carriers, who must accompany the Water Carrier at all times. Both hand-offs are made with all parties in movement, because like Water, the Walk must be ever-flowing.

Water Walks follow a relay format, so each participant carries the Water or Eagle Staff a short distance before passing it on at the next checkpoint. (Photo: Sara Century @Sympathetic Lightning)

In keeping with an Anishinaabe ceremony, the Eagle Staff Carriers are wearing pants and the Water Carriers are in skirts, but surely no skirt communicates the purpose of the occasion more effectively, and more strikingly, than the one belonging to Charlotte Loonsfoot, celebrated Water Protector from the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. The skirt reads:

"Water is Sacred. No pipelines. No mines."

Charlotte Loonsfoot of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, overlooking the Montreal River. (Photo: Charlotte Loonsfoot)

If Water is Life…then what is Copperwood?

Charlotte's skirt saves us the need for several paragraphs, but here's a bit more context: the Gichigaming Water Walk was held in response to the proposed Copperwood Mine, a Canadian company's plan to mine next to and potentially underneath Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park (ranked in 2022 as the most beautiful in the entire country), ship the copper out of country, then board up shop in 10.7 years and leave behind over 30 million tons of mine waste containing mercury and arsenic in the closest metallic sulfide waste facility to Lake Superior in history.

Understandably, the Tribal Nations in the region are concerned about such a prospect, as is anyone who cares about the integrity of freshwater. A 2012 study examining copper sulfide mines responsible for 89 percent of U.S. copper production found that every single one of them contaminated water through seepage and spills, even though they were following regulations.

But there is a more alarming possibility, too: remember that 30+ million tons of mine waste, stored on downward-sloping topography, right next to the largest and cleanest of the Great Lakes? Well, the only thing holding that sea of waste in place would be the tailings dam, and like any dam, it could break. In July 2024, the Great Lakes Fish & Wildlife Commission released a model showing that, in the event of a Copperwood dam rupture, mine waste over ten meters in depth would follow gravity and could reach Lake Superior in as fast as 21 minutes, in addition to potentially flooding the State Park and the Presque Isle River with its three majestic waterfalls — Nawadaha, Manido, and Manebezho — named after Ojibwe manitous.

Many are concerned with the proposed mine due to the potential for disruption to outdoor recreation, but for Native people, it goes deeper than that. When the lands they called home were forcibly ceded to white settlers, the 1842 Treaty which was drafted guarantees the Native People to this day the right to hunt, fish, and gather as they have since time immemorial. One interpretation of the Treaty text is that, in order for the Natives to have the same relation to the land as before, the environment must be clean so as to sustain them without harm.

Thus arises the tension between the concern for Treaty resources and massive industrial projects like metallic sulfide mines which leave behind heavy footprints. Compounds such as mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, and other by-products of mining can bio-accumulate in the food chain, passing from the water into plankton, from plankton into fish and plants, then bears and mushrooms, in every step reaching more toxic concentrations all the way up to the human at the dinner table.

This illustrates the reason for the Gichigaming Water Walk's origin at the Michigan/Wisconsin State Line: water knows no borders, and neither does its contamination.

Tribal youths carrying Water and Eagle Staff down County Road 519 towards Lake Superior. (Photo: Desiree Otterino)

A Trip Upstream: the Recent History of the Proposed Mine

Water has its currents and counter-currents, so before moving on, let's take a step back.

In a Weave News article published in February, I asked readers to join the Protect The Porkies campaign in resisting a $50 million grant of taxpayer revenue from the State of Michigan to the mining company. That money would have doubled the market cap of the company and helped them pay for the power grid expansion, cell infrastructure, and road improvements necessary to begin construction. An official State endorsement also would've catalyzed an avalanche of private investment, potentially resulting in the capital necessary to put the first nail in the plank after fifteen years of stagnant fundraising.

To our infinite dismay, the grant was unanimously approved in March 2024 by the Michigan Strategic Fund, a council of unelected businesspeople. The grant was then approved by the State Appropriations Committee in a vote of 21 to 5, with zero discussion of community concerns. By now I was inwardly quite pessimistic, but I knew that when digging for treasure, it would be a tragedy to give up with just a single shovelful remaining, so we pushed on. When the grant reached the Michigan Senate Appropriations Committee — the final stop in the line — our campaign in collaboration with others mobilized over two thousand people to call and write to their Senators to demand a rejection of the grant. It was then that our shovels at last hit gold: on July 1, we learned that the grant was not included in the 2025 budget.

My first reaction was to share this tremendous news with the mining company's investors — to twist the knife, as it were — and we coordinated with supporters to write to them en masse. But then I had a phone call with Anahkwet, one of our allies from the Menominee Reservation, and he told me, "Wow, it's great that they didn't pass the grant! We should reach out to the Senators to express our gratitude! Um... Hello? Tom? Hey Tom, are you there?"

It took me a few blinks to get back to him. The idea of saying "thank you" had never occurred to me. This is just one of many moments in my time working with our Indigenous allies in which I've observed the prominence of gratitude and respect in their interactions above all else. And so we did just that: after having first reached out to the Senators in anger and demanding they do what we want, we then mobilized a second time to tell them, "You have my gratitude” (followed with: “P.S. Be careful not to lose it!”).

But even though taxpayer funding has not been awarded to the mining company, the project can still move forward through private capital, and that's why it's crucial we keep building momentum. Last year dozens of acres of forest were clearcut, streams were forever rerouted, and dozens of acres of wetlands destroyed. This year, more forest has been cut and soil destroyed so that the company can make "new wetlands" to feel good about the ones annihilated last year. And all of this is being done for a project which after fifteen years still lacks over 90% of its funding and may never move forward.

This may be legal, but that doesn't make it right. And so while the defeat of the Michigan grant was a much-needed boost in morale, the road ahead is long. Our petition now has nearly 45,000 signatures — and we would be grateful for any efforts to help it grow — but confining our actions to ones and zeroes is no longer enough.

Whirling back downstream again, we return to our Water Walk. Over the course of the day, our numbers swell to more than eighty — quite a tally for a rural county road in a scarcely populated region. Among us are members from the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Lac Vieux Desert, Bad River, Red Cliff, the Menominee, Lac du Flambeau, Lac Courte Oreilles, and Little Traverse Bay band, as well as faculty and students from the Native American Studies and Environmental Studies departments at Northern Michigan University, and many spirited settler descendants from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

The message is clear: we don't just stand with Water; we’re willing to put feet on the ground for it, too.

Water Carrier and Eagle Staff Carrier passing in front of the entrance road to the site of the proposed Copperwood Mine. (Photo: Sol Anzorena)

More Than a Protest

Twenty years ago, Josephine Mandamin (known as "Grandmother Josephine") organized the very first Water Walk all the way around Lake Superior after having received a prophecy from an Elder that one day water would cost more than gold due to pollution. Although Grandmother Josephine has now passed away, she transmitted her teachings directly to many Anishinaabe women, including Edith Leoso and Siobhan Marks, two of the Gichigaming Water Walk organizers.

“These Water Walks gave global recognition to a fundamental fact: 'Water is Life.' When will we as humans realize that? When we’ve contaminated the last drop? Then what will we drink to live?” — Guy Reiter / Anahkwet, Member of the Menominee Nation, Gichigaming Water Walk organizer

A Water Walk is a sacred ceremony to honor our connection to the Land, the Lifeforms, and the Water which join us all together. Just as groundwater, streams, lakes, clouds, and precipitation are all united in a seamless conversation, so too is the wellbeing of we humans interwoven with that of our more-than-human relatives. It’s true our Water Walk was organized in response to a proposed mine, but it was not a protest — a point lost on mainstream media reporters intent on crunching what they don't understand into familiar categories.

"Technically, it meets the dictionary definition of a protest," a journalist told me after publishing an article with the headline: "Tribes to carry water 30 miles on foot in opposition to proposed UP mine."

Don't get me wrong, we are grateful for the coverage. Our campaign has had to fight for every ounce of recognition in a region where it never occurs to most business and political leaders to question anything related to mining, and where just the suggestion of such a thing is swiftly transferred from the inbox to the trash bin. Consider this article released by the Upper Peninsula’s lone TV station, which after a ten minute interview gives a single sentence to Indigenous organizer Siobhan Marks before granting two unedited paragraphs to the mining company. Or consider this February article from the Wakefield/Bessemer Pick & Axe (their name may give you some hint as to their perspective on extractive industries...), thus far the only mention of our campaign in the county:

A February article from the Wakefield/Bessemer Pick & Axe.

Words like "protest," "opposition," and "against," are complicated, because they require us to take a side by anointing one party as primary and the other as secondary. So while these recent media articles characterize us as the "opposition" campaign, might the case just as well be made that, given that Lake Superior and the Porcupine Mountains have existed for much longer than the proposed mine, in fact it is the Copperwood project which is in opposition to the health of these lands and waters?

"Outside forces" is another doozy. Some might say the description accurately applies to the Canadian company seeking to ship Michigan's copper out of country rather than to our small campaign based in the very township where the mine would be located... But on a much deeper level, we hope the Gichigaming Water Walk serves as a reminder that white settlers and all those descended from them are but newcomers compared to the Peoples who have inhabited these lands for thousands of years, who witnessed the birth of Lake Superior and all the other Great Lakes at the end of the Ice Age, and who somehow persisted here all that time without poisoning the land and water, a feat which the current dominant culture has managed to thoroughly thwart in just a handful of decades.

The Water Walk passing through the Presque Isle Scenic Area of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. (Photo: Sol Anzorena)

In the end, it isn't about who is "inside" and who is "outside," or who is "against" whom or what. Water comprises 99 percent of the molecules in all of our bodies, whether we be Native or non-Native or entirely non-Human, and so in a world where the opportunities for division have never been greater, Water has the real potential to be the Great Uniter.

Reaching the Mouth of the River

“As Native people, we recognize the Earth as our Mother, and her lifeblood is the Nibi that runs through her veins as rivers, lakes, streams and oceans. Extracting her for profit while risking the health and well-being of our lands, water, and all of creation is a serious offense to our Mother and the Creator. That is why we walk in prayer for her and for our Water.” — Siobhan Marks / Zeegwun Noodinese, Descendant of Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Gichigaming Water Walk organizer

Siobhan's words highlight a point that is too often lost or never found to begin with. In our education efforts about the proposed Copperwood Mine, we lay out what we hope are compelling arguments regarding the proposed Mine's threats to the environment, to outdoor recreation, and to an economy which will not benefit from being dragged back to the frontlines of boom-and-bust extraction. But something we need to begin communicating is that for Native people, and increasingly for all of us, waterways like the Montreal River, like the Presque Isle River, like the rerouted Gipsy Creek, like all those eradicated wetlands, and like the magnanimous Gichigami, largest freshwater lake on Earth, are not just useful resources in need of protection, but sacred entities deserving to be honored.

The Water Walk reaches its destination at the shore of Gichigami/Lake Superior. (Photo: Sol Anzorena)

As Edith empties the Nibi from the copper bucket into the waters of Lake Superior, she calls upon all Anishinaabe women to stand barefoot in the waves and join in song. Watching them on that overcast evening with the grey sky above reflected in the immaculate mirror of Gichigami below, I am reminded that I, like you, am a body of water, for from my eye trickles a tear.

For all ten hours of our 31-mile Walk, the heavy clouds have patiently held back their contents so that we can complete the ceremony without need for raincoats or umbrellas. By now the air has thickened into a sauna and we sense the sky longing to rumble, yet still it waits: waits as a few of us strip down to swim in the cool waters of the Lake, waits while others converse and trade hugs on the shore. But then, the very moment we set off for the potluck feast in the safety of the State Park pavilion, at long last and ever so gently, the drops begin to fall.

Edith Leoso after delivering Nibi to Lake Superior. (Photo: Sol Anzorena)

Weave It Into Action!

The Walk may have ended, but the Water keeps flowing, and so the fight to protect the Porcupine Mountains and honor the great Gichigami continues.

On September 25, the Gogebic County Board of Commissioners drafted a letter to the Michigan Senate Appropriations Committee requesting the reintroduction of the $50 million taxpayer-funded grant which our campaign helped to stall earlier this year. A corporate welfare handout of this size would not only double the size of the company; an official “Michigan endorsement” could also trigger an avalanche of fresh investment, resulting in the funding necessary to finally begin construction.

So, how many drops make up a tidal wave? Please join us in calling and writing to the Appropriations Committee Chair, Senator Sarah Anthony. Urge her to deny the reintroduction of the Copperwood grant — or if it is reintroduced, to reject it with utmost vigor. Those from out of state and out of country are encouraged to participate: stress your tourist dollars; stress the reputation of Michigan; stress that the Porcupine Mountains, the North Country Trail, and Lake Superior do not just belong to a single town, county, or state, because Water and Nature are all of our heritage.

You will find all the details you need here.

To follow along, please join our mailing list at www.ProtectThePorkies.com and look us up on Instagram and Facebook.

In solidarity,
Tom Grotewohl