The GREAT LAKES ODYSSEY Radio Hour – Old Fish Teaches New Tricks

The Great Lakes Odyssey Radio Hour is broadcast on National Public Radio (WCMU-NPR).

s1.e4 GREAT LAKES ODYSSEY Radio Hour – The eternal mystery that lives in the heart of Turtle Island and the story and legend of the sturgeon fish family on the GLO Odyssey expedition.

Sturgeon are of the family Acipenseridae, their history dating to the early Jurassic period, and as long ago as man has told stories. Even as they are in the waters the sturgeon story is man’s story, living in harmony until several negative impacts in confluence – overfishing, poaching, altered and destroyed habitats – cut off ancestral spawning grounds, pushing several species to the verge of extinction. The sturgeon legend teaches that to live man must help sturgeon as sturgeon has helped man. Their wisdom of the ages has survived sturgeon through every era in world history. And still the old fish is teaching man new tricks.

Dean Sayers, elder story teller and former long-time chief of Batchewana First Nations, on Ojibwe nma, the sturgeon story in Indigenous lore. Thomas Sinclair, woodland artist in the style of Norval Morisseau, on the master’s Legend of The Snake Sturgeon. Raven, co-leader of the global blues, reggae and soul sound band, Digging Roots, digs in on their ancestral roots. Music: M.D. Dunn, Glad Fletcher-Hawkins, Don Charbonneau.

s1.e4 GREAT LAKES ODYSSEY Radio Hour Music & Art Credits

Legend of the Snake Sturgeon Art Painting – Norval Morrisseau

Title – Big Five Water
Artist/Composer – Ray Bonneville

Title – St. Mary’s River Fantasy
Album – Nocturnes
Artist/Composer – Rusty McCarthy

Title – Gitchi Gami
Album – Nocturnes
Artist/Composer – Rusty McCarthy

Title – Safe Harbour
Album – Nocturnes
Artist/Composer – Rusty McCarthy

Title – Ghost Water
Album – The River Lately
Artist/Composer – M.D. Dunn

Title – Michigan Twilight
Album – Nocturnes
Artist/Composer – Rusty McCarthy

Title – Night Voyage
Album – Nocturnes
Artist/Composer – Rusty McCarthy

Title – Ghost Water
Album – The River Lately
Artist/Composer – M.D. Dunn

Title – Dirty Water
Album – The Zombie Zone
Artist/Composer – Trappa Skunk

Title – Listen To The Wind
Artist/Composer – Glad Fletcher-Hawkins

Title – The Healer
Album – Zhawenim
Artist/Composer – Digging Roots

Title – Tall Grass
Album – Zhawenim
Artist/Composer – Digging Roots

Title – For The Light
Album – For The Light
Artist/Composer – Digging Roots

Title – Skoden
Album – Zhawenim
Artist/Composer – Digging Roots

Title – Thunderbird Town
Album – Waiting For The Cage
Artist/Composer – Grievous Angels

Title – Spirit of Misshepezhieu
Album – Gitche Gumee Songs From the Lake
Artist/Composer – Don Charbonneau

Title – Mishepeshu
Album – Superior
Artist – Dreyam

This program is produced by Great Lakes Odyssey Radio Partners in venture with The Borderline.

Visit: raybonneville.com

Visit: rustyandmaja.com

Visit: diggingrootsmusic.com

Visit: trappaskunk.bandcamp.com

Visit: doncharbonneau.com

Visit: mddunn.com

Visit: northwindsound.ca

Great Lakes Odyssey World

Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the Great Lakes Odyssey World is a multi-national effort to strengthen and explore our relationship with the natural wonders known as the Great Lakes.

In this part of the project, we have created a multi-part audio series looking at the way the Great Lakes shape our lives, our livelihoods, our health and our culture.

50 years ago, folks in the media and elsewhere were ready to declare the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie “dead.”

The thought so appalled citizens in Canada and the United States, they forced their national governments to act.

Because, of course, the Great Lakes shape the life of both Canada and the United States. And, of course, the Great Lakes are a single system stretching from Duluth to Ottawa and down the St. Lawrence seaway. What happens to any of the Lakes will soon happen to the others.

So, the politicians of 50 years ago negotiated the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, “for the purpose of restoring, protecting and enhancing the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes basin.”

50 years later, we can see the agreement worked. We see more fish, cleaner water, and less pollution. Unlike the early settlers and colonials, who mostly saw the Lakes as a resource to tap, we now recognize, like the First Nations, the Lakes are part of our identity. They shape our relationships, our songs and celebrations of place, the way we eat, how we play, and what we make, or sell, or harvest.

50 years since the wake-up call of a burning river, Great Lakes Odyssey wants to learn how we live and love, hurt and restore the incredible gift which is the Great Lakes.

We will explore Great Lakes art and artistic expression, and meet the artists, writers, musicians who make it. We will also dip into Great Lakes history and lore – and learn from the people who have been here the longest and know it the best: The People of the Three Fires, the Anishinaabek.

On our Odyssey around the Great Lakes, we will also hear from people working to prevent poisonous algal blooms or stop the spread of invasive species. We will meet visionaries undoing decades of development that hardened shorelines, emptied marshes and wetlands, and destroyed critical spawning grounds. We will talk to people working to ensure all beings have access to pure drinking water.

Because none of us can live without pure drinking water.

In this wondrous place we call the Great Lakes, we know we are blessed by these Sweet Water Seas. We claim them as our H.O.M.E.S. as the emotionally accurate mnemonic says. They are Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior, and they are our HOMES.

As long as humans have lived in, and of and through the Lakes, people have told stories about them, sung about them, and gloried in this great gift of the long departed Ice Age. Left by glaciers thousands of years ago, they are the World’s storehouse of fresh water. If they are drained… or ruined… or damaged, they can never be replaced.

So, as we travel around the Great Lakes basin, we want to see how we are doing – what we are doing – how we’re feeling and what we’re learning as we try to live as lovers and restorers – and children and family – of the being whom the Anishinaabek call Nayaano-nibiimaang Gichigamiin, the five freshwater seas.

We hope to galvanize, inspire, and motivate you to strengthen, support and steward the Great Lakes to a beautiful and healthy future.

So please join us on this magical, dare we say “magical mystery tour” of the Great Lakes basin and Great Lakes culture.