For calling attention to water issues in general and to Lake Superior specifically, for reminding us of the Lake’s beauty and challenges, and for literally walking the walk and talking the talk, Lake Superior Magazine proudly gives two/dual Achievement Awards to Josephine Mandamin with Mother Earth Water Walk and to Mike Link and Kate Crowley with Full Circle Superior.
Ignited by different sparks, Josephine, Mike and Kate share the commitment to putting themselves on a journey to remind us to protect and honor our water.
We, in turn, honor and support their efforts and for the first time are giving two awards. Miigwetch, thank you.
– Konnie LeMay, editor
Honoring Three People Who Walked the Walk & Talked the Talk
One step begins a journey. One voice calls many to action.
These principles seem to inspire two separate journeys, with one common cause, for an Ojibway grandmother and for two retired naturalists, also grandparents concerned with what we will leave for future generations. All three walked around Lake Superior to connect with the Lake while calling attention to its particular challenges and to water issues globally.
In 2003, Josephine Mandamin of Thunder Bay initiated a walk around Lake Superior as her response to an elder’s question: What will you do for the water? She was joined by about eight others, who shared in walking and carrying a bucket of lake water from the Bad River Reservation in Wisconsin, circling the entire Lake. On the second day of their journey, as Josephine explains in the recently released documentary “Grandmothers Gathering for Gitchigaaming 2010,” she and a young man were walking together when an older man stopped his car. His grandfather, he said, foretold of a time when women would walk around all the Great Lakes to honor and protect the water. He was glad to see this come true, he said, and gave Josephine an eagle feather.
“So,” Josephine asked her young companion, “does this mean we must walk around all of the lakes?” That is in fact what she did with others as the Mother Earth Water Walk. It culminated this year with salt water carried from the four directions – the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico – to mingle with Lake Superior at Bad River. Josephine walked the first days from each of the four directions. After this year, she will pass the duty to others, who may walk along the Mississippi River next year.
Of all her walks, though, Josephine says that she was most moved and awed by the walk around Lake Superior, her home.
“Lake Superior is the most precious that I’ve known anywhere.”
In 2010, Mike Link and Kate Crowley undertook a grueling and enlightening five-month walk beside Lake Superior, keeping as close as possible to the water. It occasionally meant bushwacking or slogging knee-deep in the Lake itself.
The idea came about as a way to celebrate Mike’s retirement as executive director of the Audubon Center of the North Woods in Sandstone, Minnesota. Kate, also retired, had worked with education programs at the Minnesota Zoo and the Audubon Center.
Their plan evolved into a way to accomplish this personal goal of completing a difficult walk and to create a forum – the walk itself – to promote protection of all water, to record the current “vital signs” of the shoreline as a benchmark for the future, to talk to the people along the shores for their views and concerns and to encourage healthy lifestyles for both people and the environment.
They wrote dispatches in Lake Superior Magazine as part of their journey and outreach about what they saw and recorded.
They noted data and observations about flora, fauna and conditions of streams. They did this in partnership with governmental and educational facilities, providing a unique perspective directly from shores rarely traversed and more rarely viewed.
Since completing their walk, the couple have been busy with speaking engagements and are writing a book about their journey to be released next year by the publishers of this magazine, which also was a walk sponsor.
The couple discovered one other heartening thing along the circle – many people share concerns and want to know more about the Big Lake. “We hope this is inspirational in many ways,” Kate said in an interview with the Duluth News Tribune after the walk. “To get people walking and to get them to take care of the Lake.”
Past Lake Superior Magazine Achievement Award Winners
2010 The Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society
2009 The Great Waters Initiative
2008 Kurt Soderberg, Retired Executive Director, WLSSD
2007 The Earth Keepers Initiative
2006 Ray Clevenger and creation of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
2005 Gaylord Nelson
2004 Nature Conservancy
2003 Davis Helberg, Retired Executive Director, Duluth Seaway Port Authority
2002 Elmer Engman, Diver, Founder of “Gales of November”
2001 Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
2000 Crisp Point Light Historical Society
1999 C. Patrick Labadie, Maritime Historian
1998 John and Ann Mahan, Authors/Publishers
1997 North of Superior Marina Marketing Association
1996 Cities of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan & Ontario
1995 Lake Superior Binational Forum
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