Great Lakes artists celebrate natural resources threatened by Enbridge’s Line 5 reroute

Water and willpower combine in an exhibition at the Arts + Literature Laboratory

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Arts

Bold graphic prints, intricately woven baskets and vibrant fabric maps populate a bright exhibition space in the Arts + Literature Laboratory, 111 S. Livingston St. Though they sit about the gallery in sunny silence, the artworks tell a loud story.

The pieces appear in “For the Love of Water,” a group exhibition running through April 18, featuring the art of six Great Lakes visual artists working to celebrate water and raise awareness to protect Indigenous sovereignty, the Great Lakes watershed, and northern Wisconsin’s delicate ecosystems. Each artist expresses activism and resistance through unique visual approaches, from Melanie Ariens' cerulean screen print “We Share One Water, One Sky,” to Richard Jones’ elaborately engraved glass piece “Round River.”

Several pieces in the exhibition nod to the water and environmental advocacy movement occurring in and around the Bad River Reservation — home of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe) — which shelters 16,000 acres of northern Wisconsin’s wetlands, 17 miles of Lake Superior shoreline, and more than 100 miles of streams and rivers.

For more than a decade, the Bad River Band has been involved in legal disputes with Enbridge, a Canadian energy giant, over the company’s Line 5 oil and gas pipeline. About 12 miles of pipeline cross the reservation as Line 5 traverses Wisconsin towards Michigan, carrying crude oil and natural gas. The Bad River Band, environmental activists and the artists showing in “For the Love of Water” say if those contents spilled, it would disrupt the health of waters, fisheries, wild rice beds and other natural ecosystems not just on the reservation, but across northern Wisconsin and the Great Lakes watershed.

In a series of 11 prints, Susan Simensky Bietila uses a subtractive brush and ink technique on scratchboard to tell a story about her visit to a Line 5 resistance camp. Titled “Water Protectors 11” and originally published in World War 3 Illustrated, Bietila's prints portray those she met at the camp and other active water protectors including Cheryl Nenn, a Milwaukee Riverkeeper, and Mike Wiggins Jr., a former chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe). The prints, black and gray ink, are serious in color and tone.

“I document the collaborative activities of our communities protecting the water. I document people who are active on the shores,” Bietila tells Isthmus.

Bietila, who co-curated “For the Love of Water,” also provided a Chequamegon Bay Water Protectors’ “We Stand” mural for display, which was created collaboratively in Ashland, Wisconsin, by Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies of all ages, and vibrantly illustrates the activism of water protectors who live along the route of Line 5.

In 2019, the Bad River Band filed a federal lawsuit seeking to shut down the 12 miles of Line 5 running through the reservation. Following litigation, Enbridge was ordered to cease use of the pipeline segment on the reservation by June 16, 2026. In response, Enbridge developed the Line 5 Wisconsin Segment Relocation Project, a reroute plan that places 41 miles of new pipeline around the boundaries of the reservation. Despite further legal action by the Bad River Band and other groups to halt the reroute project, Administrative Law Judge Angela Chaput Foy ruled to uphold the required state permits in early February 2026, paving the way for Enbridge to break ground.

Shea Schachameyer’s work confronts the reroute project through “Freshwater Stronghold,” a machine appliqué and hand-embroidered cotton fabric map depicting the path the rerouted pipeline will take around the Bad River Reservation. Schachameyer uses a fiery red embroidered line to mark the reroute path — but the eye is drawn to the dense network of waterways it crosses, captured through finely cut and stitched navy fabric, emphasizing the waters that lie in the reroute’s path.

“[The tribe] wants the pipeline removed from the watershed entirely,” says Schachameyer, who co-curated “For the Love of Water” with Bietila. “The reroute just goes around the boundary of the Bad River Reservation, putting even more of the watershed at risk.”

Schachameyer’s “Freshwater Stronghold” is one of the many pieces she is showing from her Water Protector Series, a collection of maps made from detailed cutting and stitching of colorful fabrics and embroidery lines. Another piece, “Line 5 Crossing the Mashkii-ziibii,” draws attention to how the meander where the pipeline crosses the Bad River has eroded over time.

“The impact on our community feels like an assault,” says Schachameyer. “This is a continuation of the colonization of Indigenous lands that has been happening for centuries.”

Also showing in “For the Love of Water” is April Ogimaakwe Stone, an Ojibwe basket weaver who has lived on the Bad River Reservation for nearly 30 years. Her primary weaving medium, fibers from black ash trees, is intricately tied to the water and natural ecosystems around her, she says.

Black ash tree roots regulate the water table in the reservation’s swamp and wetlands, tying the species’ prosperity to the health of surrounding waters that feed it.

“I go into the black ash swamp where the black ash trees grow and get my feet wet, because they live where they get their roots wet,” she says. After finding a tree that is ready for harvest, Stone puts down an offering of tobacco and says a prayer to give thanks. “We know we are taking the life of a living relative, so we need to be mindful and cognizant of what that means and the work we are about to do.”

After harvesting, Stone places the logs in soaking troughs filled with clean water to keep them hydrated before stripping them for their fibers. When working with the inner bark of basswood, she says she coils it and stakes it in the Potato River to soak for weeks — a technique she used to craft a mashkimod (woven bag) showing at ALL.

“I can’t use dirty, contaminated water,” she says. “The water in the river does work for me, and in turn, I use it to create and connect with our ancestors who used the river in the same way long ago.”

Stone’s “Water Basket,” which sits on the tallest podium in the gallery, was created from an ash log that “by lovely happenstance, turned blue” after she soaked the log’s fibers in clean water for months.

“With the reroute, the landscape will be changed,” says Stone. "Trees are going to be cut down, and trucks will be driving around, interfering with the waterways. I see evidence of beams and mats and out-of-state plates on [Wisconsin Highway] 169 already.

“I’ve spent 26 years working to bring an obscure craft back to my people, hearing so many stories in the process. Now, what’s the fate of the trees and water? How much longer are they going to be available for us to learn from?”