A gentle but fiercely determined Canadian environmental prophet has died. Josephine Mandamin was known affectionately as Grandmother Water Walker for her remarkable project of a roughly 17,000 kilometre sacred walk around all the Great Lakes to draw attention to the preciousness of these bodies of water. She carried a battered copper pail as a reminder of the role of women as water keepers in First Nations cultures. The remarkable journey made over a number of years was made into a documentary called Mother Earth Water Walk (I've been trying to find it.)
Mandamin was originally from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory and made it her life’s mission to raise consciousness about the fragility of water as one of the basic elements required for all life to exist. In an interview Josephine observed:
As women, we are carriers of the water. We carry life for the people. So when we carry that water, we are telling people that we will go any lengths for the water. We’ll probably even give our lives for the water if we have to...Water has to live, it can hear, it can sense what we’re saying, it can really, really, speak to us. Some songs come to us through the water. We have to understand that water is very precious.
I appreciate the determination she lived through the years as a true matriarch and prophet. Our Judeo-Christian tradition upholds the sacredness of water and Jesus described himself as Living Water. Sadly, we have often defiled and desecrated water, to our peril.
Thank you Josephine and all those who have carried on your legacy.
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