Canoe Migration

Anishinaabe Team Rebuilds and Repairs Relationship with Water

We are Canoe People.

When I first started saying this I felt weird and got alot of side eye. But I know from time immemorial Anishinaabeg have migrated and thrived on our waterways. From a system of highways to the center of our food system we have always relied upon the water. 

The memory of this has been systematically taken from us. Through the theft of our children to the boarding schools to the allotment system removing our access to waterways that lie even within our reservation boundaries, our ability to move and live a mino bimaadiziiwin has been under attack for hundreds of years in many ways. As a trail runner I have seen the power of bringing us into the woods in new ways to places we've never seen and how this builds our Freedom. What are the costs for us spiritually, emotionally, physically, of being stripped from this water after a relationship that spans our DNA? 

Over the last decade as the fights to protect water have heated up and more attention has been focused on our relationship with water. Across the globe Indigenous people have been restoring their canoe journeys from the Pacific Northwest to Aotearoa. The work to restore our beautiful wild rice beds, sturgeon, and a list of renewal too long to mention is vast and powerful. In this vein we have been working to repair our relationship with water as women and non binary folks with ceremony, skills, and community.

I began repairing my own relationship with water through everything from triathlons to walking through the lake muck to ceremony. And then one day I finally said out loud "What if we retraced our migration?" Coming back and forth across these great lakes we have traversed big and small water as master canoers forever. How do we repair this relationship? How do we live in reciprocity and respect? How do we build? 

We began with ceremony, paddle practices, canoe classes led by the amazing Sam Armacost, and settled on trying our historic highway the St Louis River. The undammed section stretches approximately 17 miles from the last dam to the big water. We will begin with Chambers Grove to Woodstock Landing Saturday September 6.

As an artist, endurance runner, and community organizer I am trained and always in the mindset of determination and creation. We gather resources and smart strong people, make cool art!, we envision the possibilities, and we stare into our fear and doubt and push forward.

What has been and will continue to be the new lesson of this relationship is to allow the water to be the boss. Part of this relationship is realizing some days we can't get where we want, but on earth time, water time, we can get back out again. This Saturday we will move with that spirit. One of love for the water and each other. One of respect. If the weather and water say not today we will change routes, stops, and try again another day.

What is this art? The Michi-Bizhiw as some may call the "water panther" a cornerstone of our relationship to water and a constellation in the spring sky. We carry this visual reminder with us.

I want to thank the Maada'ooking Fund and Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health and in particular the brilliant Dr Melissa Walls for being IN on this vision. Miigwech to all the incredible teachers, mentors, elders, family, and to these bad ass folks who are challenging themselves in new ways. Your heart and support changes the next generation.

Miigwech to all of those folks who never left the water, who kept this relationship safe for us to return.

Follow along as we go where thousands of Anishinaabeg have gone before. Into the canoes and onto the water.

But it has never been about the destination. It is about the migration, always. Home, always.

-Giizh