I’m a water protector. Some people hear that and picture a protest sign. For me it started a long time before any sign. It started in the water.
One Summer, Four Lakes
Michigan is the Great Lakes State. It touches four of the five Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie. One summer I swam in every one of them.
That’s not a brag. It’s a baptism, four times over. That water doesn’t care who you are. It just tells you the truth: you’re small, and it’s big, and it was here first.
Mark’s Lake Erie Story
Mark Thedia (sp) once told me a story about his friend Tommy Gray. It was a Lake Erie story, and it was about Tommy’s wife. It’s Mark’s story to tell, not mine, so I’ll leave all the details with them. But because Mark (the General of the Red Army ants. when we were just kids knee high to a grasshopper or so they say) and Tommy Gray are only ghosts now. In the wind, they've still got more to say now. And I’ve got an ear that can hear them. Perhaps, if you're out on the lakes anywhere across the lands, you can still hear them two both with Tommy Gray’s old lady also, laughing at each and every one of you.
Some friends you make at work. Some you make at the bar. Some you make over the water cooler. Members only, Rememory come one and come all. You are all just of the water brothers now. All genders inclusive. Brothers of the Water Mark. It's called, “locker room talk.” Our current President now (If you live here, he's your President.) the Honorable President Trump. Commander in chief or POTUS, if you will. Since when did it become so classy to mock the President of the United States of America? He talked that talk. He walked that walk, but he doesn't talk or walk that way anymore. So, stop crying about it.
All the woke people claiming you’re awakening, canceling; you have failed us all. You can't cancel him if you haven't noticed and you're hereby placed on notice. Mark and remember my words and Rememory again we’ve been watching you all since 1984’s Big Brothers. And in most cases ever since 1492 when the Oceans were still deep Blues just like the Great Lakes of Michigan. We've been watching you all for the times. All The Way Alive, now. Share it with somebody and you’re bonded. Heinlein called that being water brothers. This one’s for Mark.
They Drank Here First
Before it was the Great Lakes State, it was Anishinaabe country: the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi, the Council of Three Fires. They drank from these lakes long before anybody sent them a bill.
They didn’t own the water. They belonged to it. That’s the whole difference between them and the people who came later.
“They Have No Iron”
In October 1492 Columbus landed in the islands. The Taíno came down to the beach to meet him. He wrote down what he saw in his own journal, in his own words.
“They have no iron.” Who actually talks like that?
“It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants.”
“I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased.”
Every kid learns the rhyme about 1492. Nobody learns those lines. Read them again. The first thing he noticed about people who greeted him in peace was what they didn’t have. No iron. No weapons. So, servants.
That’s the same eye that looks at a lake today and sees product.
The Bill
Near the small town of Evart, Nestlé pumped groundwater from a well called White Pine Springs to bottle and sell. State records show what they paid Michigan for it: a $200 yearly reporting fee per site, plus $5,000 to apply for the 2018 permit. Meanwhile people I know in Michigan say they pay two to three times over for the water coming out of their own taps.
The Great Lakes State. Paying for its own water. While a corporation fills bottles for pocket change.
Pure Life was a Nestlé brand until Nestlé sold its North American water business in 2021. The bottles kept flowing. The plastic kept piling up. Out in the Pacific, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch spins, a floating continent of our leftovers, breaking down into microplastics that come back to us in the water we drink. That’s the bill nobody mails you.
I’ve kept a Nestlé globe cup for over 40 years. When I was a boy I thought it was the holy cup, the one that runneth over. Years later I looked again and saw the brand face smiling at a kid from the side of his water. That’s the trick. They put their name on the cup, then they put their name on the well.
In 2016 the Standing Rock Sioux and thousands with them stood against the Dakota Access Pipeline running under the Missouri River. They called themselves water protectors. Their words: Mni Wiconi. Water is life.
They were right. They’re still right.
What I Am
I’m not claiming anybody else’s history. Here’s what I’m claiming. I swam in that water. I drank it. My body is mostly made of it. That gives me a duty, not a deed.
I’m three months sober. My water is plain water now, and I’ve never been more grateful for a clean glass of it.
I AM, a Brother of the Water Mark. I don’t need a fence or a flag or a title to know where I stand.
Wherever I stand is my land, and I will always protect the water.
