When packing for a good journey, it's hard to remember everything you might need along the way. So we made a guide.
Great Lakes Commons has been busy this winter and spring collaborating with people and projects across the bioregion to animate a 'Commons Journey'. It was hard to keep up with all the interest and support.
The Commons Journey project was inspired by the motion of water and so we found projects that were in motion (walkers, cyclists, paddlers, runners, swimmers). The list of Journey partnerships is being updated every month and we are now happy to share our Journey Guide to the wider GLC community.
Here's the introduction:
New Directions
This Guide was made to connect various journeys in the Great Lakes that are exploring different ways of knowing.
Water protection efforts usually focus on the water's quality. But what about the quality of our relationship to water? Surely we can improve our social bonds to water along with the chemical bonds.
What are your ways of knowing?
- What ceremonies of gratitude can we offer?
- What harmful water issues can we learn about?
- What communities can we visit and highlight their struggles or successes?
- What protocols can we respect and share to show our responsibilities as great ancestors?
- What expressions of hope, grief, and beauty can make a Great Lakes Commons?
- What collective power can we harness crossing boundaries of place?
Use this Guide for your field notes.
You can download the Journey Guide or participate in one of the Journeys and receive your own pocket version.
Illustrated and designed by Daniel Rotzstain, the Guide includes poetry from Ben Weaver, journey intentions and visions by Children of the Wild, Love Your Greats, Our Shores, and the Nibi Onji Canoe Journey, the Nibi song by Dorene Day, an excerpt of The Honorable Harvest by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and an introduction to the Two Row Wampum and related paddle journey this July.
Check it out for yourself on one of the journeys and see a perspective-changing circular illustration of the lakes as well as our Great Lakes Commons Charter.
Let us know what you think in the comments and what can be included in our 2nd edition.