Pokagon Band of Potawatomi hosts water walk, sunrise ceremony

Published 7:41 am Tuesday, September 4, 2018

By Sarah Culton

DOWAGIAC — As the morning mist hung over Gage Street Lake Friday morning, a group of women wearing long colored skirts crowded around Pokagon Elder Andy Jackson as she poured water for them from a copper kettle.

“It is our job as women to care for the water. We are life-givers,” Jackson said Friday during a Pokagon ceremony. “We drink this water to nourish us.”

Once the women had finished the ceremony, they all got in a line and started walking, embarking on a journey that would take them miles from where they started.

The women of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians participated in the 11th annual Women’s Water Walk Friday morning. For the event, Pokagon women and the men who support them walked 15 miles from Gage Street Lake to Rodgers Lake as a ritual to protect the water on tribal lands.

Protecting the water is a traditional responsibility for women in the Nishnabe culture. To protect the water, the women host a sunrise ceremony during which they pray for the water, and “feast” the water with strawberries and oatmeal-like ingredients. After that, the women walk to Rodgers Lake, in what Jackson, an organizer of the event, calls a “journey of sacrifice.”

“Water is needed for all life, from the plants to the animals, so we have to protect it,” she said. “That is so important.”

One of the primary goals of the Water Walk is to bring awareness to the need for clean water in a way that honors Pokagon traditions, Jackson said.

“There are so many waters that are polluted, so it is our job to bring awareness,” Jackson said. “We promised to always bring awareness to clean water. … This is our sacrifice. We want the whole city to be aware, that’s why we involve the city and the police. We want everyone to be aware.”

The women who walk are not doing it for themselves, Jackson said. Instead they are doing it so that generations to come may have clean, usable water, because these women have brought awareness to the need for it.

“We are in a time where we need to think about the next generation,” Jackson said. “We can turn the faucet on to take a drink or take a shower, but it might not be that way for the next generation. When we do this, we pray for the next seven generations, that they will have clean water to brush their teeth and live their lives.”

Until that goal is reached, the women of the Pokagon Band will keep walking, Jackson said.

“I have seen children go up doing the walk. My own granddaughter today is walking, and she is 9. Her first walk was in a stroller,” Jackson said. “There is a whole generation growing up, knowing that it is their duty to protect the water. We hope they will able to take this up and carry on this tradition, even when my generation and I are no longer able to do so.”

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