Madison Book Beat host Gil Halsted sits down in the studio with Nick Vander Puy, journalist and author of the recent book “Water Protectors: The H.E.L.P Campaign to Save the Penokees” (Strong Dog Press, July 2022).

It’s a book that details the Harvest Educational Learning Project, or H.E.L.P. campaign, a coalition of tribal citizens, environmentalists and neighbors who occupied treaty-protected lands in the Penokee Hills, in Ashland and Iron Counties of Wisconsin’s Northwoods. The Penokees, elevated ridges that contain some of the oldest rocks in Wisconsin, are the headwaters of the Bad River and eventually flow into Lake Superior.

That campaign was successful at halting Gogebic Taconite – a multinational mineral corporation- from embarking on a plan for an open-pit mine. And it’s one instructive example for grassroots activists and water protectors everywhere.

Vander Puy will appear at an author event at Kismet Bookshop in Verona this Tuesday, March 21, at 5pm.