Advancing Great Lakes Restoration

A three-week Summer Institute on Integrated Water Law will enhance and consolidate the legal capacity of Native American law students and tribal leaders, enabling them to play a powerful role in integrated watershed management for Great Lakes restoration. By deepening legal-technical understanding, teaching key legal precedents, and summoning treaty rights, it will advance Native Americans’ facility with all aspects of the legal system: the courts, legislatures, dispute centers, commissions, law schools, local nongovernmental organizations, and regional watershed coalitions. Slated to be offered in the summer of 2009 and annually thereafter, the Institute will animate a new Native American era of Great Lakes restoration and provide a model for sound understanding and collaboration between all watershed partners.

The Problem

Integrated watershed management is essential for the sustainable restoration and health of the Great Lakes. Presently ‘integration’ is understood as the collaborative functioning of agencies at different jurisdictional levels. However, integrated management cannot be fully achieved until boundaries defined by culture, law, socio-economic status, education and technical capacities are fully acknowledged and taken into account in watershed management.

Goal of the Summer Institutes

By building a foundation for Native American watershed leadership within a collaborative frame-work, the Summer Institutes will establish a model that capitalizes on stakeholder diversity for truly integrated watershed management for restoration of the Great Lakes.

Objectives

Working with leaders from Native American Nations as well as Native and non-Native law students, the three week Summer Institutes will:

• Teach new skills on water law, Native treaties, rights and legal responsibilities;
• Create a foundation for watershed collaboration by examining with participants the intersection of cultural, social and legal issues around integrated watershed management;
• Explore with participants new perspectives on, and tools for, establishing effective collaborative networks for watershed restoration;
• Bring Native American perspectives to participating non-Native Americans and
• Develop future leaders who will help build social and technical capacities in Native American and non-Native communities cooperatively sharing watersheds in the Great Lakes system.

With the achievement of these objectives, the Institutes will begin the process of elevating watershed integration to Native Americans’ higher standard:

“Concern for the Water by Native peoples is rooted within our entire view of creation and is a part of our daily lives. … Our concern for the Lakes arises from deep within our very beings, from deep within our culture and heritage.”

- Frank Ettawageshik
Tribal Chairman of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians in Michigan; honored as “Great Lakes Guardian of the Year, 2007” by Clean Water Action Michigan

The Summer Institute on Integrated Water Law is a project of the AIP Transboundary Indigenous Waters Program