The People and the Water: How Healing Our Spiritual Connection to the Great Lakes Inspires Lasting Advocacy
We understand that water is a biological requirement to our continued existence — after all, over half of the human body is made of it. But what about water’s relationship to our spiritual existence?
Water has been used in sacred rituals since the dawn of humanity. It’s been symbolic in religious communities the world over — purity, cleansing, renewal, adaptability, transformation, vitality, the flow of wisdom and the subconscious. In some traditions, it’s seen as a source of creation. In others, water is a mirror of the divine; a reflection of the Sacred. Connecting with water is a portal to the Spirit and the interdependence of all life.
More than 35 million people in the United States and Canada live in the Great Lakes water basin. Their recreation, food, drinking, cooking, bathing water, transportation and very livelihoods are related, in some way, to the Great Lakes — and consequently, to each other.
“Water connects us,” says Dan Robinson, pastor and founder of the Great Lakes Spirituality Project (GLSP). “We are all connected physically by sharing a watershed. At a more basic level, we are connected by our shared reliance on water in myriad ways.”
A Hidden Ecosystem
Over 70 million people enjoy traveling to the majestic shores of the Great Lakes each year. The sandy beaches they visit do not tell the whole story, though. The lakes themselves comprise a rare and fragile freshwater ecosystem — one that is under serious pressure. Beneath the water and within the basin, the lakes and their watersheds are threatened by pollution, climate change, invasive species, erosion, an aging oil pipeline, and overdevelopment, to name a few of the current challenges.
So why aren’t more people rising to the occasion and taking action to help preserve and sustain these precious resources? Robinson pondered this question for years. Though not native to the region, he fell in love with the Great Lakes as an adult and lives in Berrien Springs, not far from Lake Michigan. He says he has observed that people’s failure to take environmental action isn’t due to a lack of research or interventions.
“We don’t have a shortage of solutions,” says Robinson, “We have a shortage of will. If you read the literature and pay attention to what people are trying to do to heal the Great Lakes, you see there’s no shortage of ideas. Developing the will, at its crux, is a spiritual problem.”
Perhaps, though, this is less about developing the motivation and more about remembering the will, reclaiming what most communities have forgotten to time, technology, short-sightedness and convenience. We have a spiritual imperative to protect water beyond mere utility. GLSP is helping us remember that water is worthy of protection beyond mere utility.
Shared Sacred Stories of the Great Lakes
Robinson suggests that one way to strengthen our will is through shared sacred stories — whether those stories are linked to a faith or cultural tradition, a community, family, or exist between individuals. GLSP is the result of that theory.
During the COVID-19 slowdown, Robinson finally had the ability to direct his energy into facilitating these stories of symbiosis and fruitful coexistence. The mission of GLSP is to develop a spirituality of the Lakes and encourage others to value and protect the Great Lake Basin and life “that depends on these waters.” If we consider that what we measure is what we pay attention to, then it stands to reason that measuring the spiritual impact of the Great Lakes on humans, in tandem with the data exposing the environmental impact of humans on the Lakes, may sharpen our collective resolve and urgency. In other words: our will. These stories are one way to do that and spotlight the imbalance how much the Lakes offer humans, and how much humans take in return.
The GLSP website features podcasts, music, a blog, interviews, opportunities to connect, and associated sustainability projects, particularly those that involve faith-based solutions. From presentations as part of the “Perennial Waters Project,” a ministry of St. Philip Lutheran in Trenton, to a concert by award-winning roots musician and member of the Menominee Nation Wade Fernandez, the goal of GLSP was to create a thriving hub for conversations and reflections about the spirituality of the Great Lakes Basin. Robinson adds that it was meant to “serve as a connecting point for spiritual and religious communities and individuals caring for the Lakes and the waters that feed them.”
Having engaged with many environmentalists, leaders of faith-based communities and individuals passionate about the Great Lakes, Robinson is now taking his efforts one step further. He’s developing a Spiritual Journey of the Great Lakes, which will be documented via a series of sacred stories, reflections, images, meditations and written or artistic pieces about specific locations throughout the Great Lakes Basin, viewed through various spiritual traditions and perspectives of the region.
“The gift of this project is bringing together different strands, such as environmental care, love of place, and spirituality, which may be a little different than what’s been done before,” says Robinson.
Spiritually Accelerated Environmentalism and Advocacy
Award-winning author and Great Lakes environmentalist Dave Dempsey was a GLSP interview subject. Dempsey’s journey as an activist was inspired by a backpacking trip with friends to Pictured Rocks in his twenties. At the time, he was awakened in his sleeping bag by the waves pounding against the rocks and felt a deep spiritual presence. “What I literally thought,” he says, “was that I want to make sure that someone else can have this experience in five hundred years.”
Unfortunately, ineffectual programs and politics, a lack of funding and absent collective motivation could harpoon that desire. Strides have been made to protect the Great Lakes but even the more successful secular initiatives often still fall short. For example, farming and restoration projects have achieved a 32% reduction of harmful runoff in Lake Erie since 2015. But the joint U.S. and Canadian target of cutting phosphorus (that helps dangerous algae bloom) in Erie by 40% won’t be met.
“Almost everyone I’ve ever encountered in the environment and advocacy effort has a spiritual rationale, at least in part, for what they do,” says Dempsey, a major shaper of Great Lakes conservation and policy. “People are motivated to protect the environment because of their connection to the outdoors and, in turn, to the Spirit. There is something about the spiritual that has more meaning than dollars or cents or laws or whatever.”
So why haven’t we been talking about that, centering this aspect of conservatism and leveraging it for more groundswell support? This is what Robinson and his project are working to change. As a pastor, Robinson says he knows the power of shared stories within faith traditions. He intuited that this would also be true for motivating Great Lakes protection and sustainability efforts.
“Connecting people with place and specific practices and rituals associated with place is a new approach, which is a revival of an old approach,” says Dempsey. “It’s a better approach than asking people to write their legislator. It’s environmental action from the community level. After working 40 plus years on the environment, I sometimes wonder if I started working on environmental education and spirituality, maybe that would have had a bigger impact.”
The Native American Influence on Great Lakes Spirituality
Many faith traditions, including several Native American tribes, feature the Great Lakes in their sacred stories and rely on these waters to sustain their traditions. One of these is the Anishinaabe, a group of culturally-related First Nations who live around the Great Lakes in the United States and Canada. Another is the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
“We have our understanding, and so do other cultures,” says JoAnne Cook, an anishinaabekwe (Anishinaabe woman). Cook works with the water as a tribal woman, though she also serves as a tribal court judge. “If people learned their sacred stories and connection to the water, they would strengthen their relationship with it. Water would be more precious.” Because water would not only be seen as a biological need, but a spiritual one, too.
The Anishinaabe have ancient ceremonies, songs and stories that connect to the water. “We have that basic knowledge, but now we’re enhancing it, making it deeper, understanding it better,” Cook says. These welcoming ceremonies are held by Women of the Water and inspired by Anishinaabe Grandmother Josephine Mandamin’s 10,900-mile trek around the Great Lakes. “We share a little bit about how we see the water. Then we share a song and say: You can learn this. You can go do this yourself. This gives people spiritually, a way to connect with the water. And it also helps them do their part to care for the water.”
The Spiritual Journey of the Great Lakes’ first segment will feature the mouth of the Menominee River and the stories of the Menominee Tribe. The Menominee, whose tribal name is Mamaceqtaw and known as the Ancient People due to their 10,000-year-old tribal history, has a renowned sustainable forest management system.
The tribe originated at the river’s mouth when the Ancestral Bear emerged and was transformed by the Creator into the first Mamaceqtaw. Tribal members feel an intimate and sacred connection to their birthplace and the Great Lakes into which the Menominee River flows.
“In Indigenous cultures, women are the traditional Keepers of the Water,” says Mamaceqtaw member Kamewanukiw Paula Rabideaux. Kamewanukiw translates into “the spirit of the first rain that brings life in the spring,” a meaning Kamewanukiw says she resonates with deeply.
“There’s a spirit in that water. And that water is a feminine spirit,” she says. “The water is the blood of Mother Earth. The rivers are the veins. When you think about and understand all of these parts of life as spiritual beings, why would you destroy your mother’s blood? Your mother’s blood gives you life.”
This sacred-centered mindset helps a new juxtaposing call to action emerge. Why would we keep urging people to protect water in the name of environmental responsibility, when we could instead ask each other: why would you destroy your mother’s blood?
When Robinson approached her to participate in the Spiritual Journey, Kamewanukiw says she saw the partnership as part of her sacred tribal responsibility. The Mamaceqtaw believe they have been keepers of the sacred knowledge of life’s interconnectedness, which they believe was once contained by all peoples but has since been forgotten.
“As Indigenous people, we recognize the connection to the earth and the interrelationships of everything,” says Kamewanukiw. “All things are Mother Earth. A crucial interrelated connection has always existed. We’ve always known that. It’s part of traditional ecological knowledge. We also believe all people recognized this at once in our collective history. It’s just that the others…have forgotten.”
The Future of Our Precious Waters
Kamewanukiw says tribal prophecies have predicted a time when sacred Indigenous knowledge would need to be shared with the rest of humanity for the health of Mother Earth. “That time for remembering,” she says, “for living with each other and in balance with the earth, that time is now. If we don’t remember our place in that relationship, it’s the end of everything.”
Dempsey is grateful for his spiritual awakening, which set him on a lifelong environmental stewardship and advocacy journey. He understands that appealing to fellow humans beyond just their sense of environmental duty may allow us to better bridge knowledge systems and incite more enduring activism and advocacy, combining traditional ecological knowledge with scientific research and community support for stronger ecological outcomes.
Robinson hopes that the Spiritual Journey of the Great Lakes will result in shared conversation and inspire motivation to revere, sustain and protect these precious waters. “In sharing these different spiritual perspectives, I hope a truth emerges that we share together.” That shared truth, sprouting from a sacred knowing and remembering, offers humanity a better chance at healing the earth – and then preserving and helping it thrive for future generations of all beings.
By Theresa Coty O’Neil