[birds chirping] [birds chirping] [Soft piano playing] [Narrator] Rivers wind across our lands and through our history.

Our lives are immeasurably entwined with theirs, often in ways we haven't considered or have forgotten.

And there are few places where these truths are more evident than in an estuary.

Those bountiful coastal wetlands where rivers end their journeys and mix their waters with those of a lake or an ocean.

- We are in a cradle of life here in this place.

It's where it all comes together.

It is a power place of Lake Superior.

- There's fisheries habitat, there's wildlife habitat, there's all the things that the wetlands do for water quality.

- Estuaries also fuel our lives by being so productive.

So things like walleye or sturgeon, beautiful plants like manoomin, you get a sense that it's full of life.

Estuaries fuel our economies too.

Of the world's largest 32 cities, 22 are located on estuaries and are hubs for shipping, industry, commercial fisheries, recreation, and tourism.

[dramatic music] But estuaries are also among the most endangered environments on the planet.

Invasive species, too much sediment, agricultural fertilizers, industrial and urban stormwater pollution, overfishing, the draining and filling of wetlands, all these have taken their toll.

[Brady] 80% of all the fish species that live in the Great Lakes use coastal wetlands for some part of their life cycle.

They're shallow, they warm up faster, They have a lot of food in them for the fish.

You know, think of all the zooplankton, the aquatic insects, all those sorts of things.

There's lots of vegetation.

And so if we didn't have these coastal wetlands, we wouldn't have the fish populations that we do.

We wouldn't have the wetland bird populations that we do around the Great Lakes that everybody loves to see.

And then don't forget the frogs and the turtles.

So much going on in coastal wetlands.

Just really important ecosystems along the lake that if they were to all disappear, the lakes would not be the same.

[Narrator] In the 1990s, a large international monitoring effort set out to gather data about every coastal wetland in the Great Lakes that is bigger than about 2 1/2 acres.

Many are small, tucked into shallow bays or protected from waves and storms by sandbars.

Those that include a river mouth, where river and lake waters mix, are estuaries.

In total, more than 2,000 coastal wetlands were identified.

The study has also determined that twice that many coastal wetlands once lined the shores of North America's greatest lakes.

Of those that remain, two iconic Lake Superior estuaries reveal the promise and peril faced by these wonders of nature.

Two magnificent environments where human history has taken two very different paths.

(dramatic music crescendo) (soft music) [Narrator] On a Monday, April 5th, 1852, at the age of 93, an Ojibwe elder named Biji-Ki, or Chief Great Buffalo, set out on an extraordinary journey.

He and five companions launched a canoe from his village on Madeline Island.

Their destination, the White House in Washington, D.C.

It was a journey motivated by a quest for justice following a mass tragedy, a journey that would have a profound impact on the Ojibwe people, on tribes across the country, and on two of the most important estuaries in the Great Lakes.

[Carl Gawboy] This is the most important story of all in Ojibwe history.

[Narrator] It's the story of how the Ojibwe, unlike the Cherokee and 50 other tribes, avoided being displaced from their homelands.

[Carl Gawboy] And why we didn't spend the rest of our days in the Badlands of Montana, where we certainly would have been removed to if Minnesota and the federal government had their way.

[Narrator] In a ploy to lure the Ojibwe from their lands, in 1850, Minnesota territorial governor Alexander Ramsey arranged for annuity payments to be given out in the autumn at Sandy Lake, rather than on Madeline Island during the summer, as had been the practice.

Thousands of Ojibwe converged on Sandy Lake, where it was expected that the Indians would become trapped by winter conditions, unable to return to their homelands.

The plan didn't take into account the fact that most women and children had stayed behind.

[Gawboy] Well, it turns out that money was late and the money kept being delayed and delayed.

[Narrator] The food provided by the Indian agent at Sandy Lake was inadequate and a measles epidemic took its toll.

[Gawboy] Winter came, starvation started to set in and disease, and because they had no firewood, they broke up their canoes to burn for their last bit of heat.

[Narrator] About 400 Ojibwe died at Sandy Lake and during the long, frigid trek home to their waiting families, an event since called the Wisconsin Death March.

In the aftermath, many Ojibwe wanted to go to war, but Chief Buffalo saw an alternative way forward.

[Gawboy] Chief Buffalo realized that if they were to fight, they'd be annihilated.

But he also knew that there was only one person that could fix this, and that was the President of the United States.

[Narrator] After a 10-week journey by canoe, steamship, and rail, Chief Buffalo and his delegation arrived in Washington, only to be told to go home, that they didn't have permission to leave their tribal lands.

[Gawboy] At the White House, they were turned away.

The president was not interested in seeing them.

[Narrator] The delegation happened to meet New York Senator George Briggs in their hotel, and he was curious what they were doing in Washington.

- He explained very quickly what they were doing and they wanted to see the president.

They couldn't see the president.

Well, the senator happened to be a good friend of the president.

[Narrator] The next day, the delegation joined Senator Briggs to meet with President Fillmore and to present a petition to end the removal policy for all tribes.

[Gawboy] Chief Buffalo had his pipe that he made specifically for this trip.

They asked that the Ojibwe not be removed, and President Fillmore was so impressed by this elder chief, he said, "All removals are gonna end."

"No more Indian removals."

It's all because of this man.

So many other Indians across the country owe their place in the world to this man also.

[Narrator] These promises were formalized in the Treaty of 1854, which added vast new territory to areas ceded to the government in previous treaties.

The 1854 treaty preserved rights for the Ojibwe to hunt, fish, and gather on ceded lands.

Importantly, it also established permanent Ojibwe reservations in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

The LaPointe Band established a reservation surrounding the band's traditional wild ricing grounds, the Kekagan and Bad River Sloughs, ensuring the band's control over the estuary into to the future.

The Bad River Reservation also included 200 acres of prime fishing grounds on Madeline Island.

A small tract set aside for Chief Buffalo and his family on the Bayfield Peninsula later became the Red Cliff Reservation.

At the same time, the treaty established for the Fond du Lac Band, a reservation along the St.

Louis River, some 30 miles upstream from the heart of their traditional homeland, the abundant St.

Louis River Estuary, over which the band effectively relinquished control.

This fact would prove to be decisive for the fate of the largest freshwater estuary in the United States.

The assurances provided by the Treaty of 1854 and earlier treaties turned out to be elusive.

The Ojibwe have had to fight to retain their rights, rights that are derived from their being members of a sovereign nation.

Though the U.S.

Constitution proclaims that treaties are the supreme law of the land, territories ceded by the Ojibwe have become battlegrounds where that proclamation has been put to the test time and time again.

[Deperry] What was happening was that Indian men, in particular, were being arrested for hunting, fishing, and gathering.

I mean, it was story after story throughout Indian country.

How long can this go on?

Their treaty rights, we do have them protected or we don't.

And let's get it into the court system.

Let them decide.

[Narrator] On September 17, 1969, members of the Red Cliff and Bad River Bands set their fishing nets in Superior, were arrested, and won a test case against the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court confirmed their treaty-assured rights to fish in Lake Superior.

Inland lakes in Wisconsin and Minnesota have also seen significant conflicts over treaty rights.

In 1990, Minnesota's Mille Lacs Lake became a flashpoint.

[Reporter] The troubled waters of Lake Mille Lacs reached to the steps of the state capitol today.

Hundreds of sports enthusiasts protested a tentative treaty agreement concerning fishing rights on Mille Lacs and other Minnesota waters.

- The state of Minnesota appealed to the high court and justices will review this case this Wednesday.

- And should the Supreme Court rule against the Chippewa, more than 100 Indian treaties across the country should also be in jeopardy.

After an examination of the historical record, we conclude the Chippewa retained the rights guaranteed to them under the 1837 treaty.

Those are the words of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

She wrote the opinion today's... (dramatic music) [Narrator] In the ceded territory of the St.

Louis River estuary, the struggle for treaty rights has centered on the survival of resources that have sustained the Fond du Lac Band for generations.

[Erickson] During the colonization process, settlers really started to move into this region.

What they were originally interested in was minerals and timber.

First, Superior became a city, and then Duluth as well really started to expand.

These cities, as they were developing, they really used the river as a way to flush out things we didn't want on the ground near our houses.

The quantity of untreated sewage from homes and businesses grew with the population, and the estuary became a focal point for an increasing variety of industries.

As was common at the time, economic growth and urban development were unimpeded by concerns about environmental impacts.

[French] There was a lot of interest in what Northern Minnesota had to offer from a natural resource perspective as our country was growing.

So logging came to the area, minerals were discovered, and then the rails, of course, had to come in because the rails were also a way to transport this material out.

And one thing led to another, and Duluth became the largest freshwater port in the world.

(ship horn blowing) Significant habitat alteration happened in those years, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, where the wetlands were filled and slips were carved to create a system that provided for transport of raw materials.

There were tremendous logging mills and operations right down on the waterfront.

And that's part of the damage that occurred in that area is there was a lot of wood waste placed in a lot of these bays and rivulets in the estuary.

[Narrator] In the early days of the mining boom, all the ore was shipped through the Great Lakes to Eastern steel mills.

Members of the Minnesota legislature soon realized that the state was missing out on a big opportunity, which led to the building of an industrial colossus in the estuary by US Steel, which had come to dominate the industry by the turn of the century.

[French] In 1907, the Minnesota legislature passed a tax on the export of raw minerals out of Minnesota, thereby forcing U.S.

Steel to develop a steel mill in Duluth.

It was a state-sponsored, subsidized effort to get jobs in Duluth and to keep jobs in Minnesota.

(heavy machine engines roaring) [Narrator] U.S.

Steel began construction of the Duluth Works plant on a 1,200 acre site on the shores of Spirit Lake.

It became the largest industrial facility ever built in Duluth.

When its blast furnaces finally fired up in 1915, the plant began dumping highly toxic waste directly into the lake, a steady stream that flowed for 64 years.

The lake receiving this daily dose of untreated pollution was an ecological wonder within one of the most biologically rich areas in the Great Lakes.

Spirit Lake offered spawning, nursery, and overwintering habitat for multiple fish species.

Aquatic vegetation, including extensive beds of wild rice, made the lake a haven for migrating waterfowl and shorebirds.

This abundance of life was extraordinary, even for the estuary, where warm, nutrient-rich waters carrying sediment from upstream mixed with the cold, nutrient-poor waters of Lake Superior.

Spirit Lake also happened to be a site that holds extraordinary significance for the Fond du Lac Band.

[Anishinaabemowin language spoken] This is the center of all things.

All good things come from here.

And this estuary, and this Gitchi Ojibwe Gami Zibi a survival of a people, living in harmony, living in balance with all of creation.

[Narrator] The new steel plant represented something else entirely, an alternate view of human enterprise and the value and purpose of nature's bounty.

[TV Annoucer] Today's steel mill is the mightiest and most important machine ever to be turned by human hands and the story of the iron masters is more fabulous than any legend, more epic than any story out of Homer.

[Narrator] City leaders were bullish about the new steel plant, which became the region's largest employer.

A company town, Morgan Park, was built in the shadow of the steel mill.

U.S.

Steel provided workers with places to shop, a new school, churches, parks, and a community center.

Curving streets were lined with model homes made of concrete blocks from the cement factory that was part of the Duluth Works complex.

The Fond du Lac Band witnessed these profound changes to the epicenter of their homeland from their recently established reservation.

[Dupuis] The reservation is referred to as the leftover.

And if you look at it, you know, as far as its value to those that were here initially, I mean, the land of the reservation, 40% of it is wetland.

And that's valuable to us.

We call that Mashkiki, the medicine land, a place where you find your medicines.

But we also consider this our homelands as well.

[Narrator] The very heart of those homelands includes Spirit Lake and Spirit Island, which holds a hallowed place in Ojibwe history.

That history tells of a migration by the tribe over many generations, a westward journey by canoe from the eastern seaboard.

[Schuldt] They would be where they were supposed to be when they found the food that grew up out of the water, and that was manoomin, or wild rice.

Spirit Island is the sixth stopping place on the Ojibwe's migration through the Great Lakes.

And it continues to hold huge significance through the history and the cultural traditions that are even today continue to be practiced in that place.

[Narrator] Spirit Lake and the lands and waters of the estuary, which had sustained the Ojibwe's culture for untold generations, have also come to play an outsized role in the growth of an industry that has transformed the region and powered the rise of America as a global superpower.

[Brown] Most of the ore for World War I and the war machine of World War I came from here, but most of the ore for World War II.

And as time went on, A lot of our ore yet today is coming from these same mines.

You think about the buildings that you see in big cities, and you think about the appliances that we all use, and the metal goods that are a part of our lives.

If it's steel, there's a good chance that it's got a little bit of the land here in Northern Minnesota in it.

[Narrator] It's hard to imagine what life in America would be like today without the legacy of iron ore mining and the steel industry.

Yet the many ways they have transformed our way of life have been accompanied by significant environmental costs, especially in places like Spirit Lake.

[Dupuis] Sometimes I see all of the development over here in the estuary as an abomination.

[Narrator] For decades, toxic waste from the steel plant smothered aquatic vegetation that had created such fertile conditions in Spirit Lake.

Finally, in the 1960s, things began to change.

Demand for domestic steel declined, and a growing environmental movement and new pollution laws threatened the economic viability of the Duluth Works plant.

U.S.

Steel began closing down operations, And by 1979, the facility was fully shuttered.

A final group of 250 workers lost their jobs.

[TV archives] Duluth Works U.S.

Steel was the best company that U.S.

Steel has ever, ever had.

- How come they closed it up?

- They made a mistake when they closed it up.

[Narrator] Those families that remained in Morgan Park lived in the shadow of a rusting ruin that stood for another 10 years.

and the reckoning began of how to make right the extensive damage that had been inflicted on Spirit Lake.

(somber music) Duluth Works was designated as a Superfund site in 1984.

U.S.

Steel was on the hook for an initial cleanup that took 13 years, but that was just the beginning.

[Schuldt] The job wasn't done.

There was still free product, oily substances, PAHs, heavy contamination that was bubbling up in the water and on the landscape.

the next phase of the cleanup, with EPA and the steel company sharing the costs.

As federal funds were now involved, and because the plant was within the band's ceded territories, The EPA was required to get input from the Ojibwe about the cultural significance of the estuary's lands and waters and the special importance of Spirit Lake and Spirit Island.

[Schuldt] And that consultation led to some interesting dialogue between the tribal representatives and the EPA representatives, where we did our best to educate them on what that cultural significance entailed.

[Defoe] The Rock Nation.

In English, the rocks are inanimate.

In our language, in Ojibwe, they're animate.

They're alive, they have motion, they have spirit, they have power.

The Rock Nation came first, the mountains, the stone people.

Next was the seedlings, the grasses, the bushes, the trees.

They came next in order.

The seedlings, the grasses, the trees give us the oxygen to live.

And then next came the animals, the flyers, the four-legged, the swimmers, the crawlers.

They came next, they gave us the brotherhood.

Last was Anishinaabe.

We were lowered here, we were put here.

From where?

I was told from the star world.

So we're last in that order of things.

So all those other beings can live without us.

We can't live without them.

[motor boat engine] [Schuldt] We were strongly advocating for as much of that contamination to be dredged and removed from the water.

[Narrator] It has taken another 20 years for this second cleanup to play out, as part of what became an international effort to address pollution throughout the Great Lakes.

[Steiger] The states and the federal government worked through the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to list the most polluted, most degraded areas on the Great Lakes.

[Narrator] The St.

Louis River Estuary was designated as one of the most severely polluted of 43 areas of concern, resulting in a coordinated response from government and the community that is still underway.

[Huberty] It just is a huge consortium of federal entities helping out not only the state entities and the bands, but also local partners are involved.

the city of Superior, the city of Duluth, and we have a nonprofit, the St.

Louis River Alliance, that is also helping us with outreach.

[Narrator] Overall costs are projected to reach about a billion dollars, and yet not all of the impacts of the Duluth Works plant on Spirit Lake have been addressed.

- I would estimate that the recently completed remedial project removed somewhere in the neighborhood of a third to a half of the volume of contaminated sediments.

The fact that there is this much toxic poison in the sediments, it affects Nibi, or water, which is considered the lifeblood of Mother Earth.

And as long as that contamination remained in the water, just that knowledge is enough to impact the cultural and historic and traditional integrity of Spirit Island.

[Narrator] The EPA ultimately agreed that leaving so much polluted sediment in the water adversely impacted Spirit Island.

The agency gave funds to the band for them to work toward a more complete redemption of Spirit Lake.

[Hoffman] The work that's been done has really been looking toward this longer vision of, yes, let's address the environmental contamination and the ecological health around the original US Steel plant.

for a restored Spirit Lake, much more like it did and functioned much more like it did prior to European settlement in the region.

[Narrator] By the summer of 2024, the cleanup involving EPA and U.S.

Steel had come to an end.

In July, many of the parties to that process gathered to celebrate the opening of a trail that runs along the shore of Spirit Lake, past the former site of the steel plant.

[Shore] Our work is turning degraded waterfront areas into vibrant local attractions.

- Now we see a different view of what the natural resources and the outdoors are, their amenity, their quality of life.

[Narrator] For the Fond du Lac band, the work continues.

- There's a heck of a lot that we can do that gets us back to a more historically healthy, ecologically functioning system.

The ability to come back down here and harvest rice again, to be able to come back and harvest fish.

This used to be a place where there were fish camps for Fond du Lac band members 100, 200 years ago.

That's also how we heal our community.

[Narrator] 70 miles to the east of Spirit Lake, a very different history has unfolded on the Bad River Reservation.

While threats to the well-being of the Bad River and Kekagan sloughs have been and are still part of the story, it is a place where Ojibwe cultural values and traditions have largely prevailed through time.

[Elder speaking to group] Long time ago, before there was Walmart, you couldn't buy strawberries in wintertime.

It was sometimes hard to get food.

This manoomin pops up on top of the water and it grows and it ripens.

It raises its hand and it says, Anishinaabe, I'll help you.

And that wild rice gives itself to us.

[Smith] We're on the beautiful Bad River Indian Reservations with our community members and our children, our young ones to really learn how to harvest rice in the Monadu Giptagon, the spirit gardens, as we call our wild rice beds.

- Traditionally, it was the heavy carbs source that carried us through to survive the winter.

- A food that shows up with a fall leaf drop that is still ripe and probably harvestable until the first snowflakes of fall.

You couldn't ask for a more epic timing of a incredibly durable, storable food than one that arrives right on the doorstep of winter.

[Koch] That just goes back to our prophecy of really settling where the food grows on water.

That is the rice, and so here we are.

- Manoomin is really a big story.

It's a way of passing on knowledge, even the ones that are playing here.

They know what's going on.

They know what we're here for, right?

Even that little bit will eventually grow.

And once they nurture that seed, hopefully they're out there someday.

[gentle harp music] [Koch] We live in Mashkiiziibii.

Mashkiiziibii means medicine river.

So it's literally the place where medicine and food grows near water.

This was our grocery store.

So, you know, our deer, the ducks, the turkey, the fish, the wild rice, the berries, these were all staples in our diet.

[Blanchard] I myself collect medicines along that river, a lot of our medicine grows.

When I go out and collect, if somebody needs something, we have it, it's theirs.

[Tillison] The Kekoggin Bad River Sloughs is an area that supports pretty vast wild rice or manoomin beds.

So it's been a cornerstone for the Bad River community.

It's a Ramsar site or a wetland of international importance.

It has so many different designations and recognitions over the years and I really see that as reflecting the tribe's stewardship over generations.

[Native Man] Being just like our relatives in the natural world, when the wild rice ripens you'll find Anishinaabe out there harvesting and getting food for their families.

You're going to see the waterfall gather into rice beds and it's a hub of life, it's a hub of food and it's just a special place.

[Tillison] The Kekoggan-Battever-Sluz wetland complex is about 16,000 acres in size and so it's influenced by both rivers and streams feeding into the system but but also the Lake Superior water that comes into this area by wind and change of pressure too.

[Native man] Wild rice is an incredible indicator species of pristine ecosystems and wetlands.

Needs the Goldilocks effect, i.e.

water can't be too deep or too shallow, too turbid or too stagnant.

Everything needs to be just right for manoomin to appear on top of the water.

[Tillison] So there's a lot of threats to the sloughs and to water quality on the reservation.

There's the Line 5 oil pipeline that currently goes within the reservation boundaries that Batavar Band and Enbridge are in a legal battle.

Enbridge has then proposed a reroute of the oil pipeline upstream of the reservation, so it's still a threat in these different water courses and wetlands that are connected to the reservation and ultimately flow into the Kekog and Bad River Sluice complex.

So that's one big threat that we've been attempting to address.

Another is the threat of mining in the headwaters of the Bad River watershed.

[Native Man] In the high hills above us sits a metallic mineral body, largest low-grade iron in America.

Right up on top of the metallic mineral body is the groundwater recharge of the Bad River watershed.

And so that is where deep earth and water is surfacing and rushing down and taking care of all of our rivers and waterways and everything else.

Mining gives off sulfate pollution, sulfate decimates wild rice growth.

So mining is always a concern.

But macro, big picture with climate change coming, we have a lot to think about.

[Tillison] We have been noticing more frequent, larger events happening, such as the 2016 flood that really hit the reservation hard, which was a 500 year event.

We've also seen extremely low water levels.

In 2007, that was a year of Lake Superior was setting record lows.

And that's probably the first year the tribal community remembers closing down the wild rice harvest within the Kekogon Sloughs.

[Native Man] Lake Superior is the fastest warming lake in the Great Lakes.

And that's a huge concern.

As she warms up and potentially starts to deal with things like toxic algae bloom, it's going to be very, very difficult trying to restore Lake Superior to her glory.

[Blanchard] We have so much at stake.

We have our wild rice beds that are at stake.

We have our medicines that are at stake.

If we were to have a flow of oil come down that river, it just would wreak havoc on a lot of our sacred lands and medicines.

[Koch] We need our sloughs to be healthy in order to continue to be food sovereign and to follow this path.

[Smith] We can't just learn this overnight, but this is the start of it.

The start of it to where these rice camps can really help our young relatives and our elders to share their stories.

You know, to really bring together the sense of community to be able to, you know, speak on behalf of Manoomin as well and really to have, you know, feast and conversation and storytelling.

Because, you know, they have to start somewhere to be able to find their voice and be able to carry on their culture and their traditions.

[Blanchard] Our land is who we are.

Our land shapes us.

And if we let the land become sick, we'll become sick.

[Native Man] The watershed realm that we are caretakers of with the only wild rice beds in Lake Superior is a pretty magnificent thing.

And so there's some things that we need to bristle up and defend ourselves against, protecting our people, our children, and ultimately the ecosystems and the wild rice blooms that are still to come.

[soft piano music] [Narrator] There are other indicator species besides manoomin that have relied on the health of estuaries and coastal wetlands in the Great Lakes.

Among them is an iconic fish that has stood the test of time like no other, the Lake Sturgeon.

They are huge, gentle creatures, among the most docile of fish.

Along with their kin, such as this Gulf Sturgeon, being studied by the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service, Sturgeon are found worldwide.

They can live for well more than a century and grow to be hundreds of pounds and more than 10 feet long.

And their legacy reaches back to an era when Earth would have seemed like an alien planet to those of us living today.

It was about 150 million years ago that the first sturgeon swam into existence along the shores of Pangaea.

This was back when dinosaurs ruled the planet, before flowering plants and birds even existed.

Like sharks, another ancient fish, the sturgeon settled on a body design built to last, featuring bony scutes, a multi-sensory snout, and an asymmetrical shark-like tail.

Today, 25 species of sturgeon swim in rivers, lakes and seas all around the globe.

Despite having survived for eons and having adapted to so many varied environments, in the Great Lakes, lake sturgeon are inching their way back from the edge of extinction.

[Wilfond] Lake sturgeon can be thought of as a barometer of health for an aquatic system.

When you start to have stresses, the lake sturgeon is one of the first species that begins to disappear.

Lake sturgeon were locally extirpated from this system.

They were completely gone.

[Narrator] Problems started with the rise of commercial fishing during the settlement era.

Even though caviar, which is the eggs or roe of sturgeon, had been a delicacy in Europe and the Middle East since ancient times, in the Great Lakes, Sturgeon were regarded as a nuisance fish.

They were so large that they tore up fishing nets set for whitefish and walleye, and so they were killed by the thousands.

kerosene, and their oil-rich carcasses were used as fuel in the boilers of steamships on the Great Lakes.

Declining conditions in the St.

Louis River Estuary and other coastal wetlands also contributed to the demise of the species.

[Wilfond] The estuary is critically important to Lake Sturgeon.

Juvenile Lake Sturgeon utilize the productive waters of the estuary for survival and growth before eventually emigrating out into Lake Superior.

[Narrator] The Clean Water Act of the 1970s and efforts to remediate the St.

Louis River estuary and other coastal wetlands, combined with restocking programs, have begun to bring the sturgeon back.

[Wilfond] We began to clean the water up to the point where some of these fish species might be able to come back again.

before we stopped stocking to start to analyze the results.

[Man on boat] Okay!

You got something.

Looks like another sturgeon.

[Wilfond] Eventually we would like to know approximately how many individuals are in the system.

- Four, five, eight.

[Wilfond] And one of the assumptions of that is you need to be sampling all the different habitats.

(singing in Ojibwe) [Howes] We're bringing back pieces of ourselves.

We're reclaiming those things that serve us.

Sturgeon or namewag are extremely important.

They're one in the Ojibwe culture, they're the king of the fish, they're a clan animal, as a food source to the Ojibwe people historically, were extremely important.

I mean, you think about the size of a lake sturgeon and how much food that is, and the leather it might provide, and the richness of that.

That was a time of great feasting, they say here.

The sturgeon belongs in the river.

It belongs in a lot of other rivers.

And for us here to rebuild that and a relationship with that ties into a lot of our culture.

The Lake Sturgeon is part of our origin stories of our lacrosse game.

I mean, we don't feel like it's by accident.

I think it's supposed to happen.

[cheering] [music playing] The game is a gift and a dream that a young boy had.

He falls asleep, wakes up somewhere else, has this experience of being helped by this other person his age.

Learns of the game, how it's played, why it's played, all the gifts, the songs, the practices, the medicines.

[Gokee] Nemeh had got the ball and ran it in and scored, and there was this big celebration, and he was told, "When you wake up, you're gonna share this with your people.

I'm just gonna help them."

He woke up laying on the shore.

His legs were in the water and there was a sturgeon swimming in the shore by him.

[Howes] The one that gave us this game is this dame and the game came at a time when we needed it.

[Narrator] The Fond du Lac Band has been reciprocating the sturgeon's gifts by helping this migratory species adapt to a series of hydropower dams and reservoirs that have blocked them from reaching upriver spawning areas.

The dams have also prevented sediment and nutrients from replenishing the estuary.

[Hoffman] On really major flood years, new channels were carved, new material exposed, and this is in many ways the lifeblood of how a river renews itself.

And when we install the reservoirs, they're often designed to capture those flows.

And so that material that used to move through the system is now being trapped and held.

[Narrator] To complement the restocking programs in the estuary and elsewhere, the Fond du Lac Band has been helping the Sturgeon overcome the barriers that block the free flow of the St.

Louis River.

[Howes] There's been two efforts here in Chigami-ziibia or in the St.

Louis River.

that have been reintroduced.

And then there's an upper river.

And the upper river is a solely Fond du Lac driven effort.

We've had assistance and support from various state and federal agencies on that, but the idea to do it was ours.

And so we're very proud of that.

We captured the very first larval sturgeon and recorded that and called people very excited.

We knew fish were spawning up here, but we weren't sure if the water quality was gonna lead to success.

And so to document that was a pretty big thing.

[Soft piano music] [Narrator] Like rivers everywhere, the fate of the Chigami-ziibia is inseparable from that of its watershed.

For better and for worse, the creeks and streams that feed the river carry with them the impacts of all that we do on the surrounding lands.

The estuary is a repository for that legacy of human activity.

[Hoffman] It's an important thing to think about with these freshwater estuaries is that some water quality is really represented by the quality of the watershed.

they're intrinsically interlinked.

[Narrator] And so to truly know an estuary, you've got to travel up river, through the watershed, to the headwaters of the streams that feed it.

In the case of the Chigami-ziibia, those streams flow through dense boreal forests that include extensive wetlands.

This landscape is the source of the iron ore that became steel in the mill at Spirit Lake, and that has been carried by ore boats departing the Duluth-Superior Harbor for more than a century.

Mining remains the predominant economic activity of the watershed and the surrounding region.

(tractor engine roaring) [Brown] Our roads, our towns are all here because of iron mining.

You can then look at generations of people who've made their living off of it, living and supporting the communities that were here for the mines.

That makes mining more than just an economic interest.

It makes it a cultural interest, which is a big part of the current controversies debates we see today.

If you've got a mortgage, have a couple cars and some kids, and you work at a mine, your perspective is going to be, you know, we're doing the best we can, but I really need this job.

We need this mine to keep operating.

It's a lot easier to rank in priority lower the environment if that's your perspective.

You are often, you know, going to go where your bread is buttered.

Likewise, if your cultural tie to the land is more important, if the environment is not just an abstract concept, but a very real one, a real part of even your religion or your cultural views, the idea that you'd spoil it for the economic impact of a job for a couple generations is short-sighted and even cruel or unethical.

That is the tension.

[contemplative music] [Narrator] As mining evolved from high-grade ores to lower-grade taconite, which produces much more waste rock, impacts on the waterways increased.

Fish contaminated by mercury has resulted in consumption advisories, and wetlands that supported vast beds of manoomin have been impacted by sulfides that are collected by water as it flows through waste rock.

[Schuldt] Every state east of the Rockies has historic records of wild rice.

Today, it's really only found growing naturally and in harvestable amounts in Minnesota, in northern Wisconsin, and in a few places in Michigan.

The urgency of protecting what remains here in Northeastern Minnesota can't be overstated.

This is where wild rice has sort of its last stand in the continental US.

These treaties are the law of the land.

It is incumbent upon federal agencies to make sure these resources are there for future generations.

[ etheral music ] [Narrator] Today, the mining industry is poised to transform again with the establishment of new mines that would extract copper, nickel, and other minerals used to make the high-tech products that permeate modern life.

(soft music) One of them, the North Met Mine, would be within the St.

Louis River watershed.

[Brown] Copper nickel is new to the region.

It will break into more kinds of rock and then create a lot more waste as a result of the very, very small amounts of copper and nickel that are in the rock itself.

And that's where you just see that the mitigation efforts are gonna have to be all the more robust to make it work.

And a lot of people don't have enough trust in the companies involved to do it the right way.

[Schuldt] I don't think there's an example of a copper nickel mine and or groundwater.

Fond du Lac's tribal leadership has always been very clear about their position.

They are not opposed to economic development.

They're not opposed to job creation.

What they are opposed to is pollution and degradation of our environment and our natural resources and our relatives.

We expect industry, if they are going to come make a profit from these resources, that they will abide by regulations and abide by community standards.

It isn't just a simple jobs versus the environment argument, and it's really frustrating to see it reduced to that.

What gets lost in that argument is a recognition of the inherent value, economic value, of a clean, intact, functional, high-quality environment and all that that provides for us.

[Narrator] How this controversy will unfold is uncertain, and it isn't the only one facing Lake Superior's estuaries and coastal wetlands.

Managing pollution from urban runoff and from oil pipelines, such as the one traversing the watershed of the Bad River and Kekaggan sloughs is another.

So are the increasing impacts of invasive species, flooding from major storm events, and algae blooms, all of which are associated with our warming climate.

The fate of our estuaries raises fundamental questions.

How should we use and care for nature's gifts?

What can we learn from the past?

Can we find a balance that sustains the bonds between nature's bounty and our own well-being?

These questions resonate through multiple initiatives happening throughout the region.

Since 2002, a network of volunteers with the Superior Rivers Watershed Association have been monitoring the health of waterways along Lake Superior's Wisconsin shore by regularly collecting water quality data.

[Faber] We started in the Bad River watershed, which is all the streams and rivers that flow through the Kekoggin Slough, expanded to encompass Wisconsin's Lake Superior basins.

We have volunteers that go out every single month to collect chemistry samples.

We have 31 sites in our streams and rivers that our volunteers monitor every single month.

[Narrator] The association is also launching and adopt a storm drain initiative to enlist residents in keeping pollutants out of Ashland's stormwater system.

Duluth, Superior, and organizations throughout the St.

Louis River watershed also have stormwater stewardship programs that complement the extensive remediation and restoration work done by public agencies in the estuary.

[Huberty] We've worked really hard to make it cleaner, [Narrator] Neighborhood projects supported by the University of Minnesota Sea Grant, like installing rain barrels to reduce runoff pollution and flooding impacts, are making a difference as well.

The opening of the Western Lake Superior Sanitation District's sprawling wastewater treatment facility in 1978 marked a turning point in the estuary's recovery by significantly reducing wastewater pollution.

[boat horn] Sustaining the estuary's health has also become a priority at the Port of Duluth Superior.

[Udd] Shipping has been part of the economics of this region for many, many years.

$1.6 billion in economic activity is generated.

7,000 jobs, we can reach products from Europe, the Mediterranean.

[Narrator] The shipping industry has established policies that address the problem of invasive species carried into the estuary in the bilge water of ocean going vessels.

[Udd] There has been impacts to the estuary and nobody's denying that.

And we've been very supportive of cleaning up those historical polluted areas for the benefit of not only the environment, but also the humans that want to recreate there.

[Narrator] As Chigami-ziibia and its estuary have recovered, people have been reconnecting with the waterway.

A national water trail established in 2020 and supported by more than 50 organizations entices boaters and anglers to explore the estuary's winding channels and backwater bays.

The trail is managed by the St.

Louis River Alliance, which offers events year round that deepen people's ties to the estuary.

[Eilers] We connect people to resources.

So we've been doing like beginner learning classes.

We've had some foraging instruction.

We've had beginner kayaking.

It's just been so rewarding to see people, the smiles on their faces when we take them out canoeing or kayaking.

[Dupuis] We have to share the earth anyway, but we should share it in a reciprocal way where we respect one another and respect all of the gifts of God's creation that benefits humanity and all of the animals and plants as well.

Human beings are the last order of creation.

Plants and so on were created before us.

All that they ask of us is to be grateful.

[etheral Music]