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Black-and-white photo of the massive freighter Edmund Fitzgerald seen from the water, its long, dark hull stretching into the distance with a white pilothouse at the bow and a tall smokestack near the stern. Alt text written with Perplexity AI.
Feature

Our Changing Relationship to Lake Superior, 1975-2025

This Open Rivers feature is occasioned by the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. The Fitzgerald was a ship moving taconite (iron ore) across the Great Lakes between Silver Bay, Minnesota, and steel mills near Detroit and Toledo. On November 9, 1975, the Fitzgerald was scheduled to transport taconite from Superior, Wisconsin, to Zug Island near Detroit. The ship never made it; the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost in a storm with no survivors—her entire crew of 29 men. We carry the Fitzgerald in our imagination and in our relationship with the lake.

A sunset on Mille Lacs Lake as seen from Father Hennepin State Park near Isle, Minnesota. Image courtesy of Tom Webster (CC-BY-2.0).
Geographies

Misi-zaaga’iganing (Mille Lacs Lake)

Mille Lacs Lake is the second largest lake in Minnesota and archaeological evidence suggests that it was one of the first areas that humans settled in the region. Many different groups of people have called the area around the lake home. A number of Native American tribes have lived around the lake throughout time. When some of the first Europeans came through the area in the 1600s they were met by the Cheyenne. During the next century, as the Cheyenne migrated westward, the Dakota moved into the area and called the lake Bdé Wakán or Mystic Lake. When the Ojibwe arrived in the mid-eighteenth century, they called the lake Misi-zaaga’iganing, the lake that spreads all over. The first Europeans to travel through the area were French explorers, followed by French and British traders, and eventually Americans that set up towns and settlements around the lake. Following a series of treaties that resulted in the establishment of the state of Minnesota, loggers flooded into the area for the timber that was found throughout the forest surrounding the lake.

Image shows Big Stone Lake in the background, behind an unmown grassy hill, under a blue sky with cumulus clouds.
Feature (Peer Review)

Big Stone Lake Stories: Crossing Borders

By Jonee Kulman Brigham. Earth Systems Journey is foremost a form of participatory public art and secondly an environmental education curriculum model. Big Stone Lake Stories is one of over a dozen applications of the Earth Systems Journey model. Each application is adapted to the specific people, place, and program where it occurs, and with each iteration new insights emerge.

The image shows St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The waterfall cascades over a wide dam, creating white water below. To the left, grassy areas and concrete structures are visible. A multi-arched bridge spans the river in the background, with trees lining its top. Tall buildings rise beyond the bridge under a partly cloudy sky, indicating a bright and sunny day.
Primary Sources

Owámniyomni: Still We Gather

By Kachina Yeager, Shelley Buck, and Sage Yeager. Mni Wičoni. Water is life. For many of us, water truly is synonymous with life—and not only because human life as we understand it necessitates water for survival. For me, as a Dakota person who also happens to be a poet, I think of water as a type of lineage. I can use waterways as a map that transcends borders of nationhood, of spatial and temporal constraint. In this way, water is a map of not only my life, but all those lives interwoven into the same cycle of water.

Pike Island in St. Paul, Minnesota at the Minnesota River (left) and Mississippi River (right) confluence named Bdóte, “where two waters come together” in the Dakota language. Image courtesy of Laura Rockhold.
Teaching and Practice

Do You Know Where You Are?

By Laura Rockhold. Over recent years I have been on a journey, one that has deepened my understanding of, and engagement with, the Indigenous names of the place I call home: Minnesota. As a writer, poet, and visual artist, much of my work explores themes of interconnectedness between the personal, ecological, universal, and spiritual; I have found naming to be one way of praising, participating, and communing with others and nature and even myself, as so much of who we are is rooted in language and place.

Highway 61 at the mouth of the Onion River east of Tofte. Image courtesy of M. Baxley, Bear Witness Media.
Feature

Rivers of Lake Superior’s North Shore: Historical Methodology and Ojibwe Dialects

By Erik Martin Redix. The drive along the North Shore of Lake Superior between Duluth and the international border on Highway 61 is an iconic Minnesota experience. At just over three hours long, the trip offers unparalleled scenery in the upper Midwest. Visitors pass through a handful of small towns and over two dozen short scenic rivers along the shore of Lake Superior. These rivers are narrow and relatively short, descending anywhere from 20 to 40 miles down the rugged landscape of Minnesota’s North Shore into Lake Superior. For example, Brule Lake, the source of the Temperance River (and the South Brule River as well) sits 1,851 feet above sea level and, over 39 miles of North Shore terrain, it descends to 697 feet above sea level at its mouth. These steep descents result in dozens of waterfalls that beckon visitors from across Minnesota and North America.

The North Shore lies within the traditional historical territory of two modern tribal nations: the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Fort William First Nation.

The St. Louis River in Jay Cooke State Park in northern Minnesota. Image via Unsplash by Ricky Turner.
Feature

Rights of Nature and the St. Louis River Estuary

By Emily Levang. What if we related to water as our kin? I went to the St. Louis River estuary in early January together with my friend Cristin, who shares a dedication to care for this ecosystem. This estuary is the largest tributary to Lake Superior, which holds 10 percent of our entire world’s fresh surface water. As our world heads deeper into the water crisis, protecting this source of life is ever more vital. I try to begin with listening.