“If the wars of [the 20th] century were fought over oil, the wars of [the 21st] century will be fought over water.”
—Ismael Serageldin, August, 1995

The story of the Great Lakes is told through a collection of interrelated stories about the beauty and the challenges the great lakes face today. In the process, viewers travel on a voyage of discovery around the five lakes, a journey that explores the natural beauty, economic importance, tourism, commerce, ecosystem and challenges of the Sweetwater Seas. Through the prism of individual experiences, the grand story of these astonishing bodies of water is presented.

· We tell the story of Native American spirituality around the Sweetwater Seas, their rights and the importance those rights effect legal actions on current environmental issues.

· The Great Lakes Compact is also examined from the perspective of Native Americans in our interview with Frank Ettawageshik, Executive Director of the Untied Tribes of Michigan and a member of the Little Traverse Bands of Chippewa and Odawa Indians. He was a Native American delegate in the original negotiations whose personal story begins and ends on the shore of Little Traverse Bay at the north end of Lake Michigan.

· The story of the endangered piping plover is told at Sleeping Bear Dunes, leading to a review of efforts to save endangered species throughout the lakes. In 2019, a nesting pair of piping plovers successfully raised chicks in the middle of Chicago’s lakefront.

· Larry Mawby of the renowned L.Mawby Winery in Michigan’s Leelenau Peninsula, near Traverse City, leads us on a commercial journey to some of his markets in Chicago and Minneapolis. Mawby’s story segues into the wine industries in Michigan and New York, in turn opening the tales of agriculture around the lakes and how climate change effects their future.

· Wisconsin farmer Dan Brick demonstrates how individual farmers can fight destructive algae blooms on the Great Lakes from Green Bay to Saginaw Bay to western Lake Erie. Brick has been working with government agencies to not only increase farm yields but to be a better steward of the land and decrease his nutrient runoff into the Great Lakes, a model of individual effort that will put an end to Lake Erie’s annual “dead zone.”

· JoAnne Cook of the Grand Traverse Band of Chippewa Indians shares a deeply spiritual view of the Great Lakes while explaining her legal actions on behalf of her people to make sure the crude-oil pipeline beneath the Straits of Mackinac is not allowed to fail.

· We talk with Caitlen Nigreli, former Environmental Social Scientist, with the Illinois Sea Grant whose work was helping with the remediation of polluted areas along the great lakes.

· The Inland Seas is a program for students to study the great lakes firsthand onboard science ships based out of Suttons Bay, Michigan. We talk with Executive Director Fred Sitkins about the program and the influence it has on students, many of which go on to work as teachers and in environmental fields.

· At Niagara Falls we follow the power from the hydroelectric plant as an emblem of the industrial powerhouse that once was centered on the Great Lakes. This leads to examination of the industrial economy of the region. Rachel Havrelock, the founder and director of the University of Illinois, Chicago, Freshwater Lab leads us through her vision of an industrial resurrection around the Great Lakes.

THE SWEETWATER SEAS is not just a beautiful documentary—it is also a call to action by showing what other voices are doing on the Great Lakes.