Jim Hang describes his family’s experience crossing the Mekong River as part of their immigration journey. This crossing, especially for non-swimmers, is perilous. 

How is water part of the story of your journey to this place?

Transcript:

Jim Hang: When I think of water, it draws me back to when my family coming and  crossing the Mekong River into Thailand. And, as a non-swimmer, it's awfully  dangerous to cross. Now, people say the Mekong River is not as deep, like people  mentioned. But at the time, it seems like it was really deep. And, in fact, if you are  a non-swimmer many people died in crossing the Mekong from Laos into  Thailand. 

And crossing the Mekong River and how we go through a night and be a non swimmer and, just thinking back, because they tie a rope from one end to another  end. And non-swimmer, like myself and my mom, at the time were just me and  my sister, actually three sisters. My mom would carry one, and one in the front  and one in the back, and my father would have me, and then swim by myself, and  then carry another sister. 

So there were three of us. My mom takes two. My father takes two and then  some baggage too. And then we would just held on to my parents, would just  held on to the rope, and crossing from one end to another end.  

And it was so lucky that we made it across. But there are some people who, when  the rope brokes off or slipped and it fell off, couldn't hold on to it, and it fell off  and the water just kind of flushed or washed them out, down. And many have  died of that reason. 

So water it's really unique in one way that it give us, help us to drink, allow us… 

Chong Sher Vang: Yog koj tsis txawj luam dlej tes poob tuag hab os. 

Jim: Yeah. And if you can't swim then you can drown and die. But water, it's a  basic need. Without water, it's really difficult to survive.

Chong: Txawm yaam ntawd tseem ceeb heev dlej nas 

Jim: So, in whichever route, water is important.

Jim Hang

Fourth grader Mason Parry, who lives on Sibley Lake, explains his love of fishing and the day he caught the big one on Red Lake!

How do you enjoy your local lakes and streams in summer? In winter?

Transcript:
My name's Mason and I'm nine years old and I'm in fourth grade. I spend my time fishing and kayaking and swimming. 

So I live on Sibley Lake and on the shore it's very rocky. Then when you get out deeper it's sandy, but it gets really deep, really fast. And then left of my dock, there's a big patch of weeds. We call it the death pile because it tries to take you down, so we try to avoid that. But we fish on the other side and we catch big walleyes and bass and different kinds of fish. 

I just like fishing by myself because it’s peaceful and quiet. I feel relaxed and sometimes I do it with my dad, but I don't like fishing with my sister cuz she complains a lot about like, bugs and stuff.  

I like open water fishing and ice fishing the same. Ice fishing, it's just cold and you just get cold really fast and you need a really warm shelter if you want to stay out there for a while. 

When we sleep out on the ice, we have bunk beds in an ice house that we rent and it just has a few holes and a few rattle reels. A rattle reel is where it has a bunch of line on this reel. When the fish bites it takes the line out and it makes the rod rattle.

My favorite day of fishing was when I was on Red Lake and I caught my 24 inch walleye. It was 3:00 AM and we were sleeping and then we heard a giant rattle reel go off so we ran to the rail reel and we pulled it up and as a 24 inch walleye. 

We let it go because we already had our limit from fishing all day long.

Mason Parry

Activist, author, educator, artist, and Nibi Walk leader Sharon Day lives in Center City. She describes how we can have a reciprocal relationship with water by acknowledging it each morning. 

Have you ever said “thank you” to water? 

Transcript: 
That mist that's outside today. The water that's in Lake Superior. And, you know, the water that they drink. That's the same water, you know, that our ancestors drank. It's the same water that our great, great, great, great, great - all the way back to the begin time - grandparents drank.  

And in that way, you know, it goes into the Earth and then comes back up through the ground and into our groundwater, and we drink it, and then we put it back into the Earth. And same thing happens, you know, and it rises in the dew in the morning and rises and into the sky realm and becomes clouds and comes back down as rain or snow. That’s the same, same water. And in that way like, we are the ancestors, and we're also the ancestors to come. And if we wish to have that cycle repeat itself, you know, we have to do our part to take care of the water, because it is all dependent upon the water.  

I ask sometimes young people to think about their favorite body of water. Draw a picture of it. Lately, I've been asking people to, to write a love letter to the water. And really, to feel that connection, to verbalize it, to talk about it. And also, we only take care of that which we love. And so if we can, you know, really every day you know, that morning before we take that first drink of water, now to say “Miigwech. Water, we love you, we thank you. We respect you.” I think that would go a long way to really making people be more connected to the water, getting them to be connected to the water, and then maybe to not do so much damage.

Sharon Day

Rich and Shari Bachman love recreating on the water in and around Chisago County, and they have witnessed water quality changes for better and for worse. 

Have you observed your local waters changing over time? 

Transcript
Rich: Hi, my name is Rich Bachman.  

Shari: And I'm Sheri Bachman. We live in Lindstrom, and we recreate on the water a lot in this area. 

Shari: The importance of clean water, I think, definitely hit home living in this area. Just because there are so many lakes. And we would go from one to the other, and it's like, well this lake's terrible, we don't even want to swim in it, and this lake's great, so let's use that lake. Since we've lived here, they've actually cleaned up, I believe it was North Center was an impaired lake for a while, and South Center. 

Rich: Mhm. 

Shari: And now I believe they're off the list, both of them. And then we do the, we canoe the St. Croix River constantly. I mean, it's in the hundreds of times that we've been on that river. So. 

Rich: Yeah, we're really blessed with... 

Sheri: The water and the- 

Rich: The water recreation in this area with all the rivers, all the tributaries going into the St. Croix. We've pretty much done ‘em all.  

Shari: Yeah 

Rich: I would say, well 

Sheri: We've canoed a lot of the rivers in Chisago 

Rich: Yeah  

Sheri: For sure. 

Rich: And fortunately, our, some forefathers had the foresight to protect these waters, the Namekagon and the St. Croix as national scenic waterways. And so that we can be assured that our grandchildren will be able to come and travel these waters and still see the pristine, protected shorelines, which in turn help protect the water. We figure everybody's got the right to enjoy the water as they please as long as they're respect it. 

Shari: I mean we've been canoeing the St. Croix for the 33 years we've lived here, and they had a sand mine north of, I want to say it was north of Pine City even? I can't quite remember. And you could tell after that mine opened the St. Croix got dirtier, it got siltier and, uh, it really hasn't kind of gone back to what the complete pureness it was when we were first living here 33 years ago.  

Shari: We live in the land of 10, 000 plus lakes, but it's not an infinite source necessarily. 

Rich: Absolutely  

Shari: If it gets polluted, it's no good to us. If it gets overused, we drain it.[You know, it's, um, it's, it's all intertwined. Water is a huge part of what we need to survive on this planet. And I just wish that people would educate themselves. And governments would help educate people as to what are the things we can do to protect and preserve and clean up our waterways. It's going that direction, I feel like, more than it used to in the past, but I think there's still more to be done.

Rich And Shari Bachman

Elaine Fleming teaches about nationhood and how each Indigenous nation has its own important waters. She explains the role of legends in understanding water, place, and people. 
What legends help you understand your relationship with water?

Elaine Fleming

Annie Humphrey grew up in the area and spent time serving overseas in the Marine Corps. She shares about a time when a surprise delivery of manoomin reminded her of home. 
What relationships or practices help you feel connected to a place?

Annie Humphrey

From growing up without running water to building a career in the drought-prone southwest, Barry Welch’s life experiences have shown him the importance of access to water. 
Have you ever felt that water was scarce? 
What experiences have helped you appreciate the value of water? 

Transcript:
I’m Barry Welch, I'm from SMSC Community, and I was raised first 10 years in Redwood Falls, Minnesota, near Lower Sioux. That's where my mom is from, and my dad, he's Oneida Brothertown and Stockbridge-Munsee. These are immigrant New York Indians that were moved to Wisconsin. 
We lived there in Redwood Falls in a little house that - we had electricity, but no running water. We had to go over to my grandpa's house, which is maybe 60 yards away or so was the water. And of course, that's where we got our water to drink, take baths in and wash, so we'd have to go over there and haul it, bucket by bucket. Didn't have to do it until I was probably about six or seven. And my mom would say, “go get some water.” So I’d have to go get water over there. 
And I hated wash day, because then you had to bring a bunch of water. My sister Brenda, we'd go over and we'd haul it together. And mom had one of those old Maytag Wringer washers. Not only did you have to put water in the washer, but then when it was done, you had to take it out and throw it away. 
We hauled water a lot. We'd take our weekly bath by the stove in one of those old galvanized wash basins, and then we'd get her bath first. Then it was either Pat or I, or at that time, there was just the three of us that ran barefoot a lot. My mom would use one of those old stiff brushes used for doing the floor to scrub our feet because our feet looked dirty. 
I got my Bachelor of Science from the University of Minnesota in 1965. I was about the only Indian kid that ever got a degree in forestry up to that time. While I was at the University of Minnesota, one of my professors wanted to know if I'd stay and get my Master's in watershed management here, so I started to go that way. And then I decided, no, I need to get a job and make money. So I went - the Forest Service hired me up at Cass Lake. I get drafted in the army. Go in, we're two years there in Vietnam. I get out, get married, come back up to Cass Lake, working for the Forest Service. 
I was in Phoenix for a couple of years as a trainee to become an agency superintendent for a reservation. And you got to learn that there's different water laws for the west than there is here. Here it's all riparian water rights - if the water goes across your property, that's yours. Out west, it's whoever used it first. So they passed that type of law because of mining, the guy wants to do some sluicing, finds a stream, brings it down in some aqueduct of some kind or canal, to wash the dirt away, to get at his gold. If he got it first, it's his. Even if farmers move in and want to take some for farming, no, it's whoever got it first. So with the Indian tribes out west, we said, well, they've been using it since time immemorial. So they have it first. 
Of course, as the west grew up, the Bureau of Reclamation built all these irrigation systems and basically stole the water from the tribes. As the state engineer of New Mexico, Steve Reynolds, said one time, “Just give them money, not water, pay them off.” Those type of water fights we were having, both in Arizona, with the Gila River, Northern Arizona, San Juan River, Little Colorado River, and then all the Pueblos down the Rio Grande. You almost have to be there to really get the picture of that water is so scarce and so valuable. I don't know if kids here would ever understand that concept, unless you go and live it.

Barry Welch

Ken Thomas shares about a home whose surroundings hold spiritual connection and historical significance for him and his ancestors. 
Where do you go to feel a deep connection to a place or body of water? 

Transcript:
I'm Ken Thomas. I'm a member of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota Community. I'm an elder, and I'm 72 years old. 
I had a house on the reservation, and I sold that house to my son, Zachary. He didn't want to build his house, so he said, “Dad, can I just buy your house and you can build again?” And I said, “Sure, that would be great.” 
So in the meantime, I was looking at properties, and I was in Eden Prairie, and high on the river bluff was this house and it overlooked the valley below. And in the distance I could see Mystic Lake. And if I brought my vision in and I looked down, I could see the Minnesota River and a beautiful bend in that river. I could see that view from every window on the south side of that house. As soon as I was in that house, I knew that this was the place. 
There was a spiritual connection with the Minnesota River. In that one single view, I could see the past and the present because the Mdewakanton People used to use that Minnesota River as their source of water and as transportation. So if I look to the right, I could see approximately where Shakopee's village was, and if I look to the left, I could see where Black Dog’s village was, and I could just envision the ancestors taking their canoes and going down the river from village to village. And if you went past Black Dog’s village, you went into Mendota, and that's a sacred place where the Minnesota River and the Mississippi River come together. And then you enter the Mississippi, you go down to Little Crow’s village, which was Kap’oża, (“those who travel light”), and then down farther from that was my great great grandfather's village, Medicine Bottle’s village. So it was a special place. 
I did not grow up on the reservation. I grew up in South Saint Paul, Minnesota, and in South Saint Paul, they were big on Kap’oża, the Kap’oża Indians. I'd never heard of the Kap’oża Indians, and then I did some research when I got older, and I found out that it's not the Kap’oża Indians, Kap’oża is the name of the village that was Little Crow's village in South Saint Paul, right along the river, and you can still visit that site. There's a big sign there that says “site of the Kap’oża village,” and it gives the years that they were there. That house in Eden Prairie, man, that was a special holy place for me, anyway. I lived there, until I could get my land assignment and then build another property here on the reservation. I still drive up there every now and again, just to make that connection. And that's my water story.

Ken Thomas

For Sheldon Bryant, moving from southern California to Minnesota was eye opening. He describes his ancestors’ connection to this area and his hope for action that protects water. 
What inspires you to protect water? How do ancestral connection and caring for future generations influence your view of water?

Transcript:
My name is Sheldon Bryant or Waŋbdi Ohitika, which is Strong Eagle in Dakota. I am an enrolled member of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. I am 67 years old, Scorpio with a Bad Moon Rising, which is a water sign, I think.
I was born at a Naval Hospital in Riverside, California. I spent the first 48 years of my life in Southern California. I moved to Minnesota in 2002. I lived less than an hour to the beach, less than an hour to mountain skiing. I really didn't appreciate what I had out there, until I moved to Minnesota, and I noticed the sky was really blue. There were trees, no concrete walls, and there was water everywhere. And I really attached myself to the water. It's just part of me now, the lakes, the rivers, it was just something then, a background, and now it's more of a major thing for me. 
Things are smaller. When I moved here, I noticed, you know, 12 cars was a traffic jam. And I think my favorite place would be Minnehaha Falls because of the movement of the water. Stillwater, you know, the lift bridge, or just hanging out in that little town. It's just, I like to go thrift shopping. It's just, there's too many people in California. 18 hours a day, the freeway is bumper to bumper, five lanes each direction, and if you go to the beach, there's no space anywhere. 
I am pushing for the tribe for Father's Day sometime is to take us upstream and then let us canoe down to Murphy's Landing, and kind of get an idea of how the ancestors used to travel back and forth. My uncle, Little Crow, he led the Indian war in 1862, traveled extensively, because you would take wives—he had several—and you'd get them from other villages. And he was in the Lakota lands building a structure for his expanding families, and I know that they, we had horses, and we traveled well, so we were on the rivers, and that was our freeways. 
And I know that climate change and the weather patterns and the water's not going back into the ground, and it seems like we have drier years, and it's all a cycle, but one person can't do it alone. However, 350 million people, if they did the same thing, it would save a lot of water. Every little bit helps.

Sheldon Bryant

Cyndy Milda shares stories from her involvement in three water-centered protests. She reminds us of the importance of taking action to protect water, even if that means starting with small changes. 
What actions—big or small—can you take to protect our waters? 

Transcript:
Haŋ mitakuyepi Cyndy Milda, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. Hello, my relatives, I am Cyndy Milda from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. 
Water, in our language, or how we look at water is, water is life, because without water you cannot live. You need water for everything - to hydrate yourself, to plants, animals, everything really needs water to survive. In our culture, that is Mni Wiċoni, water is life. We can go without water for four days. We know that for sure. After that fourth day, that's where it becomes harder to go without water. 
So I've been on three horse rides. My main one was NoDAPL out in Standing Rock, South Dakota that my husband and I, we went and we rode against it. The other one was Winona LaDuke. We went all the way to Enbridge’s main site. We rode all the way there. So from Standing Rock to Enbridge, main facility up in North Dakota, couple hundred miles. The other ride that I did was Line 3 up in northern Minnesota. That was affecting Leech Lake, our Anishinaabe relatives, is where we were raising awareness. 
What I want to talk about NoDAPL is how it all started through a prayer. It was a prayerful protest. It wasn't no harm or anything like that. It was all through prayer. We would just go and we would sit there, and that's all we did, was sit and sit and sit and we'd be in prayer that whole time. And some people are like ‘that has to be pretty boring,’ but when you live that prayerful way of life, our Dakota life, it's not bad because you're there with like-minded people, so you weren't protesting violently or bringing violence at any time. 
That's just one step to save it for our future. We need to start cleaning up the water. There's so much that we can do on every level. It's just not water. It's every level to help Uŋci Mak̇a (Grandmother Earth). How can we cool Uŋci Mak̇a down? Less pollution, less cars, less using water. 
If we just take one small step every single day, we can make this world and this earth Uŋci Mak̇a, we can make her better. We can heal her over time. That would be my biggest thing is for the future is to heal her, to help clean up these bodies of waters, especially in Minnesota. 
Then look at our waŋbdi, our eagles. Growing up, I never saw eagles. Right now, I see at least an eagle a day. I never saw that when I was growing up. And so just making that small change. If we can do that with one animal species, we can do that with all of the water in Minnesota. 
If we make life simpler, it's so much easier. If we look at our ancestors, our ancestors looked and used the resources that they had around them. If they didn't have it, they didn't do it. Some of us, to this day, try to do that as much as possible. Yeah, things are a lot easier to buy. Yes, I have a gas line coming to my house that I need for heat. But if I didn't have that gas line, I could still use firewood. There's pros and cons to it all, like anything with our Dakota values and our Dakota teachings, how do we find that balance? As we go on and think about in the future, that's what we need to think about more is, how do we find that balance of life of how much is too much, how much is too excessive, and how much is okay?

Cyndy Milda

Caitlin Welch has fond memories of spending time fishing with family as a child. Since then, her learning of the Dakota Language and involvement with NoDAPL have shown her the need to protect our waters. 

Does your family have any traditions with water? Has your view of water changed over time?

Transcript:

Haŋ mitakuyepi. Dak̇ota ia Winuna de miye waṡicu ia Caitlin Welch emakiyapi ye. In Dakota, I am called Winuna, and in English, my name is Caitlin Welch, and I'm a member of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community.  

Water is life. Mni Wiċoni. We can't live without it. It sustains us, from drinking it to eating the food it gives us. We need water to live, and that's why we're here, because we have water. No being can live without water. Protecting our water is very important. As a Native American person, we have had our rights taken away, and now we're trying to reclaim our water rights specifically. And this includes, you know, the ways we fish and the way we use water in everyday life. It needs to be protected and cared for, just like any other being. Almost all of my childhood, all my summer activities, revolved around water. I was swimming every day out on the lake, out on the boat. As a kid, most of my memories are out on the boat doing a lot of fishing.  

Fishing was very important to my family. Every summer, we'd go up to our cabin and we'd fish almost every single day, my dad had all these secret spots on the lake we'd fish, that weren't really that secret. It was right at the end of the dock.  

He taught us everything we needed to know, from tying the knot to setting the hook and then fileting the fish. Fishing was a part of life for me, really. I remember spending hours and hours out on the lake and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, and it was all worth it for all those amazing family fish fries we would have. I remember at the end of summer, we'd have these huge stores of fish filets, and my dad would invite all the relatives over, and we had these big fish fries out on the shore, and it was just a beautiful experience. And that was like our family time, and like our way of feeding ourselves and feeding our relatives as well. Just the phrase Mni Wiċoni, water is life, I fully understand that now. I guess I didn't even know those words before I started learning the language a couple years ago. I think that it was really the NoDAPL pipeline that really made me understand, yeah, we need to protect our water, and it can get very bad, and we need to not have these pipelines. And I know that there's even more pipelines everywhere else, in, one here in Minnesota too, and it goes right up north, right through up north, and that's where all the good lakes are. So that does worry me that the water will one day be polluted by that pipeline.  

There's a lot of place names in Minnesota and towns that are still named in Dakota that we kind of mispronounce, Owamniyomni. That's where the St Anthony's Falls is, and that was our sacred waterfall. And there's used to be an island there, and that was very sacred place to our people. And then where the two rivers met, that was mdote. So mdote was where Fort Snelling is now still is  mdote. Our people, Mdewak̇aŋṫuŋwaŋ’s, we are the Dwellers of the Spirit Lake. That was considered, there's some debate, but it was mostly considered to be Lake Mille Lacs, and that's where our people traditionally gathered and also fished. That water is very sacred to us, and still is. There's many words in Dakota that involve water. We have a word for everything. So, Mni is just water. Wakpa is river. Mde is Lake. Water is life, and we need to protect water. It's the most sacred thing on Uŋci Mak̇a, Grandmother Earth, and we need to protect it.

Caitlin Welch

Shea Bryant recalls childhood memories of water from swimming pools to the ocean. She describes the deep ancestral connection she discovered after moving to this part of Minnesota. 
What cultural values have impacted your view of water? 
Where do you feel most at home? 

Transcript:
My name is Shea Bryant. I am a member of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. My true earliest memory of water was when my brother Michael and I were very small, and our mother had taken us to Palm Springs. And while she was still sleeping, we put socks on our hands and climbed into the pool so that we could crawl around the edge of the pool, like sideways, around the entirety of the pool. And that's how my mom found us was in the pool with the socks on our feet. She wasn't very happy, but I recall it quite fondly. 
We were pretty young. We lived in an apartment complex that had a public pool as well, and kind of not long after that, she started having us actually learn how to swim instead of just going around the sides of the pool. 
Our dad had a sailboat, and we were in between Long Beach and Catalina Island for whatever reason. I don't know if I jumped off or fell off, but I was in the water, and there was so much seaweed wrapped around my legs, and I didn't know how to comprehend that, really, at that age, and it scared me. And I still, to this day, don't quite love going in the ocean, because that fear is still pretty strong. 
Having transplanted here in my 20s, when I think of Minnesota, I really gravitate towards the Minnesota River and everything that's off 101 here in Shakopee, because it really speaks to what this place is, where my ancestors are from. One of the more incredible things about being here is that it's not just significant in the sense that, oh yes, it's a river that's a part of – no it's here, specifically here, they were here. My blood is here. That's a different way to look at your culture as you try to find it. 
Because of where I was raised, in Southern California, we had a lot of that drought culture. Growing up, wanting that water, needing to conserve water, was always really big. You could watch a commercial on TV, and Shaquille O'Neal would tell you to turn off the water while you were brushing your teeth until you were ready to rinse. I think that made getting that weather that much better at that moment right before it rains, and you can smell it, and it's like right there. There's an abundance of that here, which I think is very enjoyable. I think there are an incredible amount of things that need to and should be occurring when it comes to how we care for our environment and how we care for our planet in a way that will create more sustainability for future generations.

Shea Bryant

Charlie Vig recounts childhood memories of the Minnesota River, as well as changes he has seen to the Community’s water infrastructure over time. 
Have you seen your community’s use of water change over time? What hopes do you have for the future of water in your community? 

Transcript:
My name is Charlie Vig. I live in the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. I've grown up most of my life here. I retired as the Chairman of the tribe. 
When we moved to the reservation around 1969, we all had wells on our property, but that took a while to get. I remember, I don't know how old I was, and we would travel to two different springs, both in Eden Prairie, I believe. We had grown up in Eden Prairie, close by there. I just always remember having this big milk jug in our kitchen, and then we would dip water out of it to drink. Fast forward to 2024 we have sophisticated systems for all of our members, including running two different water lines to each home, one for irrigation and one for drinking. 
So as a child, I always remember the trips that my mom and I took, and my sister probably. We’d go down to the river and find snapping turtles, go fishing, and collect sweet corn. From what I remember, it was mostly if we were going to a large gathering or a powwow at one of the other tribes. And so we would bring gunny sacks of sweet corn. But in that process, we'd we would definitely go fishing on the river. I remember a little stream that came off of it, and a little bridge. That's where we'd catch most of our fish. In fact, I think it came from the springs that we would get the water from. And then we'd also pick up a snapping turtle or two. And I don't believe I knew what that was for, other than it was fun to catch. And I remember them very large. The last one I remember, I stood on it, and it stood up and started walking. So, I don't know if I was just that small or if it was that big. And then later on in life, I realized that every time we did that, we had turtle soup. It was very good. I remember that. 
I don't remember my mom having any fears of the water, but when we would be down by the river, she would warn us of the dangers of the currents. It's pretty powerful, watching the river, you know, and seeing how fast the current is. And when we'd fish in the water, you know, in the river, you'd just see how fast your bobber would go downstream. And I probably heard stories of my siblings in the river, and maybe that was enough to keep me out of the river. Being the youngest of eight children, I learned a lot, I'm sure, by their life lessons. 
The river was always just a real memorable place because it was such a large body of water, I guess. Our community has set some high standards for our drinking water. I mean, we put out a water report to all the members periodically. I know early on, the past council had looked at other alternatives to reuse the water, and now we have a pretty elaborate filtration system. So we bring all of this sewage to our central plant, and we process the liquids and we filter it out, and then we release it back into our ponds that goes naturally into the river. So by the time it comes out of our plant, you can drink it. It seems to be working, and it relieved the need to have to rely on the local sewage treatment plant so we're more independent.

Charlie Vig

Nancy Hernesmaa, AKA Knife Lake Nancy, was a wilderness ranger in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for 23 years. She became a ranger by chance after she left her career as a graphic artist in Minneapolis.  

What chance occurrences have made a profound impact on your life? 

Transcript:

Nancy Hernesmaa

Aurora Wahlstrom is a stone mason living at the Stegar Center while building an off-grid cabin. She says that living off the grid has given her a profound appreciation for water and an awareness of how much water she uses each day.  

What experiences have given you an appreciation for something you formerly took for granted? 

Transcript:

Aurora Wahlstrom

 
Harold Langowski is an engineer who works for the City of Ely. He is grateful for Ely’s clean drinking water and aware of the work needed to keep Ely’s water systems in working order. 

What invisible systems sustain your life? 

Harold Langowski

Cory Maria Dack is a Boundary Waters canoe guide who believes every outdoor trip, no matter the length, can be life-changing.

What outdoor adventures have significantly impacted your life?

Cory Maria Dack

Jen Widmer

Jerry Tiede

Arlene Busse

Karl Haemig

Nick Pollack

Alicia Schueler

Chad Fix

Luisana Mendez

Luisana Mendez - Spanish

Toni Dauwalter

Hope Flanagan

Donnie Phyillaier

Moua Yang

Members from the Prairie Island Dakota Community share how wild rice is an important part of their community and how we need to think about water as a precious resource. The tribe challenges us to do more than simply thank water but to take steps forward to protecting it. What are action steps you can take to keep water clean?

TRANSCRIPT 
Prairie Island Dakota Community: Wild rice and water  
Nicole Staudt: So we have been actually purchasing wild rice. Prairie Island has been working on restoring for  the last about 8 years. So northern tribes like Leech Lake and bringing it down while it is still green, like right  after it has been harvested and then reseeding it out here in some of our back waters. 

Art Owen: So, we started a few years back, you know, planting. There are a number of people who are going  to harvest. So they are getting all excited about that. Wild Rice right here in our backdoor. That is pretty good.  

To work in the river back then that is the way you survived. That’s why siŋkpȟétata (it means muskrat) is so  important too. To eat off, everything we had came off the river. The otter, fish, turtle. Our ceremonies like  tonight, we will have will probably get done about 2 or 3 in the morning but we will take water that is left over  from the people who have prayed for it and we will put it down here in Sturgeon Lake and it will go through that  facility down here in the cooling system. You can’t stop it but you can pray that it keeps our people safe and  the wellness of their surrounding area stay safe. The most precious thing on earth and that is water. We need  it, you need it to survive. Anything in the future. Not just saying thank you all the time for it but to constantly how are you going to keep it clean? What laws are you going to change to keep it clean? And what are you  going to do with your programs to make sure that water quality is where it is at for your people.

 Men make  things hard. They make it difficult. When it is very simple. The earth was meant to be simple. It wasn’t meant to  have what it has today.

Prairie Island Dakota Community

Tom Chang enjoys trips to Red Wing with his family as the Minnesota winter melts away. He uses these trips to educate his children about the importance of natural resources for future generations. What are some ways that you initiate conversations about Minnesota's natural resources?

Transcript:

Kate Flick, interviewer (KF): Do you just want to introduce yourself?  
Tom Chang (TC): Yea, my name is tom. What kind of questions do you have for me?  
KF: So you are out here fishing today, do you want to talk a little bit about why you are fishing? 
TC: you know, it’s just a nice day out. It’s been a long kind of winter. It’s been off and on with the weather. So, we finally  have a nice day, just taking the kids out and showing them some fishing and teaching them about outdoors, nature.  
KF: Why do you think it is important to do that? 
TC: Um, you know keeping the kids educated, you know about wildlife resources, I think it is important because, you  know, we need the natural resources, and we want to keep it this way for the future as well.  
KF: What do you think waters role in that is? 
TC: Water’s role is everything. Everything needs water. I think with water everything, everybody needs water. It’s a natural  resource, it is something we use a lot of, you know, we use it to catch fish to eat, we use it for transporting, we use the  river system for just about everything – fun and work.  
KF: Yea, I know it’s pretty awesome living in this place that has a lot of water. So why have you come to this particular  spot? 
TC: I’ve come here because ever since I was a kid, just like how kids are today that are here, my brother used to take me  here. He used to work with the DNR department and he knows a lot of lakes and rivers and he likes to show everybody  the lake systems and how to take care of the place, don’t leave your trash out, keep the place clean because for future  people everyone wants to use it too.  
KF: Yea, that is an important perspective, I bet he is doing good work. So you have come here for how many years now,  would you say?  
TC: I would say the last 12 years, I’ve been here fishing pretty much around the lakes and rivers. KF: have any good fishing stories? 
Tc: No, I don’t, sorry, I don’t, but it’s an experience. You come out here and enjoy nature how it’s supposed to be. KF: What do you think that means for future generations? 
TC: I think it will be good for kids and the future generations to learn. It is important because if nobody cared and  everything just wasn’t as nice as it used to be, we would lose all of the natural resources. That’s important - we have to  keep it that way.  
KF: Yea, you are developing a young fisherman here. One of the questions that I have been asking people that has very  interesting answers has been, if you could give any message to water, what message do you think you would give to her  or it?  
TC: I would say thank you for everything you are doing.  
KF: Yea, she’s pretty important, well cool. I will let you get back to your fishing.

Tom Chang

Mathew Murillo and Kathryn McGrady discuss their love for Hok-Si-La, the foreverness of water, school field trips, and how awesome water is. Where is your favorite place to be outside?

Transcript 

Kathryn McGrady (KG): We like to go Hok-Si-La. We do a lot of camping in the summer  and we do a lot of swimming, so fishing as well. Well you know we did go there on one  of my son’s schools field trips and they had, the fisherman came in and poured in  buckets of fish, it’s just amazing because there was probably 20 different types of fish  from them just going out there and pouring them randomly into these buckets. Which I  though was pretty neat and another neat thing about Hok-Sil-a is that when it rains or  when it starts flooding, the way it changes the beach it’s just fabulous. We went down  there and there is no beach but we just went swimming anyways. It’s just neat because it completely changes the landscape – the water does. You never know what you are  going to get when you go back.  
Mathhew Murillo (MM): when I go to Hok-Si-La I like to just sit and float on the logs.  KG: We love the rain too, don’t we? 
MM: We love to just go and jump in the puddles.  
KG: Yea, we like to go jump in the puddles. We like to dance in the rain.  MM: And of course hail is not good, of course.  
KG: Right, nope.  
MM: Once it popped one of our tires and with rain and with the rain and sun together  you can form a rainbow.

Kathryn McGrady and Mathew Murillo

KaYing Yang has lived in many places over the years, including in Laos and Thailand. She shares stories about her family and Hmong people gathering and cleaning water for drinking and other uses. Where does your drinking water come from?

Transcript:



Narrator: KaYaing Yang has lived many places over the years. She shares stories  about gathering and cleaning water together.  
KaYing Yang: Through my observation, the water source, it was not natural right.  It came from city water and so it was pumped into a tower and there were several  towers around the compound where the refugees or Hmong people were living.  
And to get this water young children and mostly women were, had these carts  that are man-made. And they put like bicycle wheels on them. And they would  push and pull those carts to near the water tower so they can mus cug dlej and  
then they put it in these containers that I think were used for gasoline, you know,  as like gasoline cans. 
And so then depending how big your house was, you could carry up to like, eight  to ten gallons of those, eight to ten cans of those water, which probably weighs  about, you know, it probably carried about five to ten gallons. And, you know, I  have never tried it myself, but I saw that it took several people to push that cart  back to their home.  
And I think because where Hmong people have lived, they have never trusted that  the water was clean. Other than, I think, my parents' generation, where they lived  in very remote areas where they drank from the spring water, right? But ever  since then, our life has always been what nyob Loojceeb, right? Which is a military  base or nyob refugee camp, which, you know, was crowded and not sanitary. Or now in villages where the water is brown, right? 
So I have always seen Hmong, when I live in Asia, boil the water to drink. I actually had an experience in Laos where I went to this kind of remote village and they  offer--you know, Hmoob na Hmoob they're very generous--puab offer me a  bottle, a cup of water. And when he pour the water from the kettle into the cup,  the water was brown, right? So, to be polite, I drank the water, but I also knew  that it was boiled, right?

So I think that these are some of the ways that Hmong people treat their water is  that they always boil. And even in this country, you will see the grandma,  grandpa, they will boil the water from the faucet, right. Because I think they don't  trust that it's clean. So I think it's been it's because of this experience that we've  had, you know, with water. 
Narrator: This interview was produced by Chonburi Lee. For We Are Water  Minnesota, I’m Kori Suzuki.

KaYing Yang

Esther Humphrey reflects on her most vivid childhood memory that remains after a stroke during surgery at the age of seven took almost all of them from her. Have your water memories ever inspired you to action?

Transcript:

My name is Esther Humphrey. I live in Cass Lake, Minnesota. 

So, when I was seven, I had gotten sick. They had me in the hospital and did surgery and I suffered a stroke on the operating table. The doctor did tell my mom that I would never be able to walk or talk or take care of myself or anything like that. I guess strokes affect people differently. I never lost use of any kind of body parts or speech or anything like that. 

But I had lost probably almost all of my childhood memories. That was something they never knew was going to happen.  

But the one memory that was just really vivid and alive and I could close my eyes and I could be there, was a memory of just being really small, standing on the banks of Lake Winnibigosh, at the West Winnie campground. The sun was shining on my face, I can feel the warmth, but it was a cool breeze. The grass was still green and you could hear the wind. Just feeling really, really small and just really safe. Feeling really safe.  

I remember looking down and seeing my feet and there were like little tiny red tennis shoes. I don’t know those could have been my first little water walking shoes [laughs] those little red tennis shoes [laughter]. Because I’ve been through a lot of shoes walking. 

Probably mid-2010, I started hearing and seeing some information flying around the internet about an elder woman from Canada … her name is Josephine Mandamin. She spreads the message of: we really need to start taking better care of the water and being more considerate of her and conscientious of how we are using her and wasting her. 

I’ve always kind of carried that perception of the water as being a female. 

So I've been on a few different water walks, praying for the water and just sharing that good, loving energy that you get when you do that. You feel that love that she has for us, and all you have to do is pray for her.

Esther Humphrey

Community involvement is a key way that the Cannon River Watershed Partnership makes lasting differences along the river. Kristi Pursell, CRWP employee, shares her approach of hands-to-heart-to-head, and how this methodology is making a lasting difference in connecting people not only along the Cannon River, but around the world. Do hands-on projects make you feel more connected to a project? If not, what does?

TRANSCRIPT 

I think what the Cannon River Watershed Partnership attempts to do--we try to get people involved enough  where they can see their piece of the puzzle, they can understand their importance to a particular body of  water or a particular place in the world.  

Once you have that connection and you care, and you understand your place in it and the relationship, that is  going to catapult you to action, to caring, to taking steps, to writing a letter, to organizing a group of people in  your community.  

We have locations and groups of people all over the watershed – for the most part, at about the same time or  the same day or the same weekend, to all sort of come together and pull trash and garbage out of their lake or  their section of the river and just do a big clean-up event. And these folks come and they bring their own  canoes to get on the Straight River and just pull out all of the tires and gunk and really kind of gnarly stuff that  you might find in there and they love doing it and might have to sort of remind them when – ok - it is 1:00 – come and eat some lunch and we are going home.  

Folks are really excited about it and love doing it – through their experience, through their hands and their  hearts. And then it kind of makes its way up to your head to have those experiences that are really meaningful  and fun and important and then that migrates up to your brain to say, “Oh, yeah, hey. I want to do this in the  future. Let’s make sure we are taking care of this resource. Let’s make sure we are taking care of the Cannon  River, and therefore, the Mississippi River and therefore the Gulf of Mexico.” And because all waters are  connected, that can be a really powerful way to connect people whether it is just in our watershed, or across  the country or across the world.

Kristi Pursell

The Minnesota Humanities Center offers a new way to think about our future—grounded in the humanities. Our state is rapidly changing and growing even more diverse. Look around. In case after case, in community after community, we too often choose not to listen to each other. As a result, we experience gaps and breakdowns.
 
The Humanities Center’s approach affirms we’re all in this together—using philosophy, literature, art, music, history and language—we focus on what unites us not divides us.

Minnesota Humanities Center

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