Great Lakes top of mind during water ceremony at Soo Locks (8 photos)

Batchewana First Nation and Lake Superior Watershed Conservancy hosted a water ceremony at the Soo Locks Saturday, which brought people from different walks of life together for a day of knowledge sharing and teachings in the heart of the Great Lakes.  

Juliana Lesage-Corbiere, community health representative for Batchewana First Nation Health Centre, told attendees that the water ceremony is a way of sharing knowledge and starting conversations around the waters of the Great Lakes with all community members. 

“We are the echoes of the land, we are the echoes of the water. And she needs us, mother earth needs us now more than ever. As we look at the health of the Great Lakes...I’m getting a little emotional, because this work needs to start with all of us coming together, and we need to scream at the top of our lungs so those can hear us,” said Lesage-Corbiere to those in attendance. “This is so much more than what I am right now, it’s for the little ones that are running around, it’s for those that maybe don’t have a voice right now, so that’s why we’re here today.”

“My relationship with the water is the same as your relationship - we are 75 per cent water,” said Lake Superior Watershed Conservancy co-founder Joanie McGuffin. “Every human being in the world is. All life is water.” 

Newly re-elected Garden River First Nation Chief Andy Rickard acknowledged the work of the late Josephine Mandamin, the well-known elder and water activist who spearheaded a series of ‘water walks’ with Anishinaabe women around the Great Lakes known as the Mother Earth Water Walk. 

“...I know how critical her work was for our people, and the inspiration that she provided not just for this area, but across North America and worldwide,” said Rickard. “I do recognize a few of our women that have also helped carry that responsibility with the water on some of those walks that happened throughout our territory - so miigwetch for taking it upon yourself and your people, and that responsibility of protecting the water, to do that good work that needed to happen and continue to do that work.”

Batchewana First Nation still opposed to ferrochrome processing plant

Batchewana First Nation Chief Dean Sayers had a more pointed message to deliver during Saturday’s water ceremony, reiterating his community’s opposition to the proposed ferrochrome processing plant in Sault Ste. Marie. 

“We are in a heck of a predicament, because of the failure of some of the assumptions that the new governments have made in our territories. So we need to call on all of our leaders that are assuming some of those jurisdictions wrongfully - but until we get to where we need to be in our relationship, we need to encourage the existing leaders to follow through on the promises that they made to us, the promises that we made to creation, the promises that they made to all of you,” said Sayers. “They need to make sure that you have a good quality of life, as does all of creation. They deserve that too.”

“We will not endorse any more encroachments, any more poison in our waters. No ferrochrome on the Great Lakes, no ferrochrome in the watershed, no isotopes, no burying of nuclear waste in our territories. We will not compromise, we will not give up our inherent promises that we made to all of creation,” he continued. “And I encourage you to tell your leaders as well, we cannot continue with these higher incident rates of cancer amongst our people living in proximity to Sault Ste. Marie, living in proximity to this beautiful waterway.”