- The bicentennial is an important thing for the United States.

- This is a chance for us to learn from the past of where we weren't inclusive in the inclusion of other voices.

(gentle music) - I'm from upstate New York, and really, everything I know kind of springs from the canal.

- [Speaker] It's a waterfront where there was none.

It represents connectivity.

- [Speaker] The impact of the Erie Canal started long before the Erie Canal.

- What kind of Erie Canal are we really wanting to bring into the next 200 years of its life?

- This is an opportunity to talk and to broaden the perspective and broaden the narrative of the Erie Canal.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Reflections on the Erie Canal" is provided by the New York State Canal Corporation.

- This year, New York State commemorates 200 years of the iconic and historic Erie Canal.

This incredible waterway was completed in 1825, and it transformed our state into a bustling hub of commerce and innovation, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean.

We are proud to partner with WMHT Public Media to share the fascinating stories of the people who built and traveled the canal, and how it connects the economic, cultural, and recreational landscape of our nation.

Please enjoy this continuing journey on the Erie Canal.

(string music) - The original intent of the canal was commercial, and of course national security and moving settlers, and that has evolved, over time.

It was the first large-scale use of eminent domain taking over land that people didn't wanna give up, it was the first large-scale public works project in North America.

- I think that many people, you know, historically think that certain things are a given, that they were destined to happen, that, you know, after the Revolutionary War was finished, the United States' good and ready to go.

But in reality, the United States was in a pretty fragile position.

- We have this new government that needs to have loyalty and participation with people on the opposite side of the Appalachian Mountain chain, but there's no commercial ties, that was seen as a problem, and George Washington talked about it, "The cement of interest is what will bind them, and the interest was commerce."

The easiest way to move bulk items in the late 1700s is on the waterways.

It wasn't any one person who came up with the idea.

If you look at the geography of New York State, it is the only state that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes physically, and so it's the logical point for a canal.

(music) It was seen as ambitious, but the question always came down to who was gonna pay for it.

So the federal government ended up not supporting, and New York State decided that they would go on their own.

They hired James Geddes to do a survey, he decided that it was possible to go to Lake Erie.

So in 1810, the New York State Legislature agrees to form a commission, who were in charge of looking into the feasibility of a canal.

DeWitt Clinton was one of them, he was Mayor of New York City at the time, it was seen as an obstacle too large for a lot of people.

"We're gonna drain the state's treasury, we don't have any engineers, how would you take this on?"

This was all new, and whether it was legal or not was new, and that was debated.

The war of 1812 actually helped to promote future canals.

All of your generals, militia, colonels - they struggled to get troops and supplies out to Western New York, the frontier where a lot of these battles were taking place, that is an extra push toward the canal.

So in 1817, DeWitt Clinton was elected Governor of New York State, and that helps him push the canal system, helps the legislation pass, and starting in 1817 through 1825, they kept adding sections and sections.

The laborers were locals, eventually, Irish immigrants would fill out some of the labor force, especially in the more difficult areas, like the Montezuma Swamp, and at Lockport.

Once the canal opened, you have tremendous growth in population along the canal route.

People are more willing to live out in areas along the canal and beyond, because you have an open market now.

(gentle music) - 20 years after the completion of the Erie Canal, there's already 30,000 people working in canal-related industries, be that in locks, weigh locks, warehouses, on canal boats, so that is a rapid shift in the national economy that reverberates today.

- Following the construction of the Canal, New York becomes America's foremost port.

As these new communities form on the banks of the canal, you've got thousands of people traveling along its banks, communicating with one another, learning from one another, and it starts out, you have what's called "The Second Great Awakening", really takes hold here along the canal, this is a religious revival movement, rejecting in a lot of ways traditional Calvinist notions of predestination, and embracing a more perfectionist doctrine, one that says you yourself have a moral responsibility to improve yourself and society, so a lot of reform movements will also spring out from canal communities, and this new religious awakening, notably the Abolition Movement, the Temperance Movement, and the Women's Rights Movement.

- As a technological marvel, the Erie Canal is revolutionary.

As a transportation route for people who are enslaved before 1827 can use to escape slavery out of New York state, and then thereafter, if you're coming from the South, it's also incredibly integral to Black life.

And then for free Black people, not only are they helping enslaved people use the Erie Canal, but they themselves are going to different lock cities to build connections to the free Black communities there, that will strengthen the movement for Black civil rights before the Civil War, throughout the Empire State.

- Canals kind of turned society upside down.

People start really thinking about new ways to envision their world, which I don't think people like DeWitt Clinton were envisioning was gonna happen in 1817 when they started the whole project.

(string music ending) (mellow music) - I started this position at the Erie Canal Museum to be the Erie Canal Research Fellow, and it was part of a project called "Reimagine the Canals," a larger initiative of New York State.

As a researcher, I realized that in order to help reimagine the canal, I needed to understand how it was currently imagined, and how it has been imagined through time in order to get that insight into how it could potentially change.

So I decided to go on a project, where I traveled all around New York State along the heritage corridor, and study the way that the Erie Canal is dominantly communicated.

(mellow music) And what I found is that there's a very strong traditional narrative that has been passed on for about 200 years now that have been reinforcing the same ideas.

The dominant narrative of the Erie Canal is a very celebratory narrative about what the canal did, what it means, and how it's symbolized in American culture.

(mellow music) It usually starts in 1817 with the beginning of the construction of the canal, and often talks about New York pre-canal as if it was this wilderness.

There was this idea that nature had been conquered.

A phrase that I saw around the state of New York when I was doing this research, and even here at the Erie Canal Museum is that "The Erie Canal made New York the Empire State," and that was seen as a positive thing, and as a symbol of progress and civilization.

(mellow music) But this really gets into a deeper conversation of whose land is being opened, who makes these decisions, and who's benefiting from the so-called opening of the interior for settlement, and whose settlement.

(mellow music) The idea of a dominant narrative itself is pretty troubling, there's so much nuance to explore with history, and so the idea that there's just one celebratory, often narrative is problematic, because it tends to overshadow the other details, which kind of make it more real, and more lifelike, and more three-dimensional to learn about.

(gentle music) There were negative impacts to the canal, there are positive impacts to the canal, and they're not really separate from each other, they're interconnected.

So that whole story needs to come together.

(gentle music) What kind of Erie Canal are we really wanting to bring into the next 200 years of its life, I think it's gonna have to radically shift in order for it to become a more inclusive narrative.

(gentle music) - All history is written from a certain perspective, and I think for a really long time, historians were expected to try to be objective as possible, but it is impossible to be objective all of the time, so now there is this new movement to acknowledge that we all bring who we are with us to the historical work that we do, and now there is work to be done to unpack these layers of a certain perspective being prioritized in history.

In December of 2023, we unveiled a new exhibition called "What Else Is True?

", and this is kind of layered on top of the permanent exhibitions that we already had.

It's meant to be a sort of intervention, and it's very small, it doesn't do enough, it includes a few new panels that bring Black history and Haudenosaunee history into the museum on the walls in a significant permanent way for the first time, and it also includes a number of discussion questions throughout the museum, "How was this maybe written from a certain perspective?

What might be left out here?

What else is there at play?"

(gentle music) Two things can simultaneously be true at once.

The Erie Canal did bring great economic prosperity to some people in New York state, and the Erie Canal was a significant contributing factor in the dispossession of the Haudenosaunee.

(gentle music) - Haiwhagai'i.

(Jake speaking in Onondaga language) Jake Edwards is my English known name, I'm from the Onondaga Nation, Eel Clan.

Our home is what's now called New York State.

This was our house, the trees, the forest are our walls to our house, the skies are our ceiling, and Mother Earth is our floor, and we consider it that way to this day.

(gentle music) (birds cawing) It's been recorded and studied to be around 1142, the forming of the Confederacy of the what we are called by the French, the Iroquois, and we're called by the Americans "The Six Nations", and what we're also known by our own name as the Haudenosaunee.

(gentle music) Well, the impact of the Erie Canal started long before the Erie Canal.

You look at the history of the colonizers, the way they write their history is it was one of the best moves to help build America, and that the American people had ever done.

Well, you look at the Native American side of it, and it's the most devastating and betrayal acts that the government of the colonizers has done to us to obtain our land, and we still feel the effects today.

They considered the Haudenosaunee "New York State's Indian problem", and we view it the opposite.

- So all of the nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy from Albany, which is Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and then later Tuscarora, all are involved in the territory of the canal.

The canal was all about Westward migration, and the dispossession of Haudenosaunee People, and then Native people out West, as well.

- Indigenous people all over the world understand their proper relationship with the natural world, and especially water, because it is the river of life, where bodies are comprised of water, we have this special relationship that is regenerative.

We couldn't live, we couldn't produce without our association and relationship with water.

What the Dutch failed to understand and future colonists that came to this land was that the river of life entails that you live in proper relationship with the Earth.

What came through after the Revolutionary War, several decades later, was that they had in mind to build the Erie Canal, which was an artificial river, and devastated all of Haudenosaunee land, so we have moved on as a country of ill-made relationships right from the get-go.

- These two worldviews come into stark contrast in the canal.

- The revolution, we looked at it as this is father and son fighting over something that's not even theirs, and so we're gonna stay out of it.

And so we did.

Although while the war was right in our rooms, right in our yards, some of our people did side with both sides, the American side and the British side.

(somber music) - [Interviewee] And what this was was a scorched earth campaign.

All these corn fields were burned, all kinds of fruit trees, and other things were being destroyed, as a consequence of this.

The Onondagas had to escape, many of them went towards, you know, Niagara Falls, Fort Niagara, many of the Seneca, the Cayuga, and it was a very bad winter, so many of them died, but some of them stayed.

- [Sandy] Washington paid his troops with Haudenosaunee land, because he had no money or other means to pay them.

- So these are called the military tracks that come as a result of the Sullivan Clinton campaign.

And that opens up, particularly in the Western part from Fort Stanwix, West, Patriots, Americans, wanted to go West, and this becomes the mythology, the myth history of manifest destiny or Westward migration.

And so the Erie Canal makes that possible.

The Revolutionary War makes that possible, and George Washington's scorched earth campaign makes that possible.

(somber music) - And in the meantime, we survived, their strategy of eliminating us didn't work.

And so the majority of our people moved to Buffalo Creek, up near Lake Erie, and we established a community there, but a lot of the people stayed here at home at Onondaga, where we are today.

(somber music ending) The newly formed United States government passes these laws, and one of the laws that sticks out is the Intercourse Act, or the Nonintercourse Act, you could call it.

(somber guitar music) And so New York State violated federal law, and they knew the value of our home, and so they pursued it, and they looked at it as advancing and growing America, the newly formed government.

We did make treaties with the United States government, 1794, George Washington, after the treaty was ratified from Canandaigua, George Washington and the United States Congress ratified the treaty, which made promises that this land is still ours undisturbed.

And so the treaty was violated shortly after 1794.

- Part of the challenge is that a lot of the treaties were already solidified, even the illegal ones before the canal was built.

But 1825, in October, the canal is ready, DeWitt Clinton and other dignitaries board a boat, and others in Buffalo, part of this grand flotilla was the Seneca Chief, that was the lead canal boat that DeWitt Clinton rode on.

Once the large-scales settlement starts taking place, then Haudenosaunee Peoples are pushed on the reservations, and then the reservations start to shrink, as Buffalo grows, the reservation right near there has to shrink and shrink, eventually they take it over, at that point, there wasn't much Native Americans could do to stop this flow of settlers, and what Euro-Americans would call progress.

(somber music) - The Erie Canal is being constructed and completed, it will be complete two years before the immediate emancipation in New York State goes into place, which is in 1827.

And so you have two things colliding.

You have immediate emancipation coming, while the Erie Canal is being built, but you also then have this transportation system that is offering a new way to be able to construct an underground railroad.

There's land, but also then water transport along the lock system as trade is going on to get to Canada West, to get out of the New York State, using this Western transportation route on the Erie Canal.

(somber music ending) - The canal was successful right from the start, and you had long lines at the locks, and so there were already calls to enlarge it, and to have two locks at each spot, so you can have eastbound and westbound traffic.

Starting in the 1830s, railroads started being built.

Competition is fierce up until around 1880, when the canal really is struggling to compete with the railroad.

One of the arguments leading into the barge canal was that the railroads had a monopoly, except for the canal, and the other thing was you have businesses in Buffalo and New York City, who really supported the canal, because they utilized it.

And so the barge canal's approved in 1903, there was a large influx of Italian, Russian, Polish immigrants, a large portion of the labor on the barge canal was done by Italian immigrants.

And the downside for a lot of the locals is that it bypasses the traditional centers of these communities that grew up along the original canal, they utilized the Mohawk River, and the Hudson River for the Champlain, so in the 1950s, you get the super highways, the railroads are still there doing well, and the St.

Lawrence Seaway was a big thing.

But then oil pipelines and gas pipelines came in, and that was really the big thing that hurt the barge canal were the pipelines.

- Traffic on the barge begins to significantly decline, and this deals a real financial blow to a lot of cities and towns on the canal that rely on its traffic.

(gentle music) (train whooshing) - [interviewee] The canal is alive and well today.

The commercial use today is more looking at heritage tourism.

People are seeing it as a recreation resource.

In year 2000, the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor is founded, and that is a part of the National Park Service, and then in 2020, we get the Empire State Trail, which is about a 750 mile long walking and biking trail.

- [Interviewee] The canal's also used for hydroelectric power, agriculture, irrigation, and flood control, so it really was ground-setting, and it set in motion what we think of the government today, what we expect of the government today from maintaining roads, taking care of the waterways.

Our canal system is still run by New York state, these are things that we may take for granted, but it's a service that the state does to provide us opportunities for commerce, and travel, and quality of life.

(gentle music) (country music) - We are standing here at the Waterford Machine Shop, actually, on the Waterford compound.

Really, this machine shop is the hub for all manufacturing, machining, and fabrication for the entire state of New York canal network, rebuilding, replacing, fabricating components and parts for each one of the canal locks, and other infrastructure throughout the state.

Most people don't understand is that the fabrication is done at canals in-house, and we have the capabilities, we have the machinery, we have the skillset of people to do so from the engineers, right down to craftsmen doing the work.

We historically have machined a lot of the rails, and these are the rails that the valves actually ride up and down on.

On 1950s, 1960s era equipment, it took a substantial amount of time, roughly about 10 days on each one of those pieces of equipment, whereas now with the three axis, state-of-the-art three axis mill, where you cut that time down to about a day, day and a half.

(machine whirring) (workers chattering) (country music) In the wintertime, it's all hands on deck, full bore, full steam ahead, if you will, in the Waterford shop, we receive valves, sets of valves from each one of their seven other sections across the state where we'll take them in, we'll refurbish those valves, we'll inspect them, make any critical repairs, any structural repairs to the valves, clean them up, paint them, and then send them back out for installation in the locks.

(machine whirring) - So we're at Lock 17 in Little Falls, New York, which is the highest lift lock in the canal system.

We're here this winter finishing a winter pump out project, where we actually de-water the entire lock, and rehab a lot of the working components that are underwater most of the year.

This lock is approaching 110-years-old and a lot of the components that we use here are still original, or they're patterned after the original.

So we have to re - fabricate a lot of these in our maintenance shop over the winter in order to restore them and replace them for the coming navigation season.

We have a very limited season, when the canal is closed for navigation between November and April, where we have to do all of this major construction work, and we're doing it in the worst of conditions.

(machine whirring) We have an in-house skillset that we have learned, and conditioned, and developed over many years in the decades that the canal system has been here, and those skills are passed on from one generation of worker to the next.

- This will be my third season.

My first two years were seasonal, this year, I worked the winter pump out, and I just became a Canal Worker One.

I like the old canals, I'm learning about the new canal, or it's 100-years-old, but for me, this is the new canal.

I'm trying to turn people's light on for the canal, because the more people that are enthusiastic in the canal, you know, it's gonna be good for this one, and the old one.

(ambient music) (drone whirring) (ambient music) - Canals has an earthen embankment inspection program, it covers approximately 130 miles of water and pounding earthen embankments, spread across the state, that helps keep water in the canal, and keep our navigation pools level.

This is our Madison reservoir dam, and this is essentially a giant earthen embankment.

This reservoir was originally built to feed the Chittenango Canal, currently, this reservoir has no operational impact on the Erie Canal.

It's what we call one of our legacy assets, so it's still our responsibility, it has significant benefits and impacts to the community here.

You have your traditional army of boots on the ground inspectors, walking approximately 50 miles of embankments, that's a lot of people.

So we had the idea to get a thermal camera-equipped drone, and fly that drone over these embankments to see if we could detect water seepage.

We tried that, and it turns out, it works really well.

The exciting part about this technology with these drones is the move to autonomous drones.

This isn't science fiction anymore.

You can purchase a drone in a box, it's called a dock drone, the concept is, can we put a dock drone at this reservoir to fly to do our thermal inspections, our visual inspections, help with our dam safety inspections and operator rounds.

Can we do that remotely with a dock drone?

Now, not to replace our drone pilots, but as a force multiplier to supplement the boots-on-the-ground inspections with daily drone flights.

When you send it on the mission a second time, it goes back to the exact same spot at the exact same angle, and what that does paired with drone photography software is you build a record of the condition of your asset, over time.

So now we applied the same concept with a robotic dog.

We attached a camera to it, we trained it on the path that our engineers would walk, and we tested it, and it turns out, that works too.

It never ceases to amaze me the ingenuity and innovation of the employees here.

You know, the more we think about it, it's like maybe that is just in our DNA as the canal.

(gentle music) Originally, the idea for a canal was such an innovative idea, you know, the way it was financed, the way it was constructed, I mean all just huge innovations for its day, so, you know, in a way, I think as a canal employee, you're tied to that, you know, I don't know if it's something in the water that gets into us, but it's an honor to work with the employees at canals.

It's amazing.

(gentle music) (intense country music) (Reporters chattering off microphone) - I'm gonna give you and Matt these lovely towels which -- - See, everyone gives gifts.

- Which we've got the 200 logo on them.

- Thank you.

- Today is the opening of the canal, we do this every year, it is May 17th.

This year is the start of our 200th navigation season, 200 years since our first one.

Some people think that that the Erie Canal is something that was as opposed to something that is, but it has never stopped.

It has been rebuilt three times.

This is the New York State Barge Canal, which is the third version that we still call it the Erie Canal.

Hello, Captain.

(fusion music) More than 78,000 lockages last year across the entire canal system, which includes 57 locks of 524 navigation miles, and economic impact of over $400 million annually, supporting the more than 220 communities along the canal.

- [Captain] And need to push it hard, it is pretty loud.

There we go.

(passengers cheering) (passengers cheering) (fusion music) (passengers cheering and applauding) (fusion music) (visitors chattering) (guitar music) - The Colonial Belle is a family business, started in 1989 by my dad, Captain Lee.

We've been cruising on the Erie Canal this entire time, so it's been a lot of years now.

I got my license in 2020.

I learned to drive the boat with my dad as the other captain on board when I was 18 when we got this exact vessel.

We've had other boats before this, but we've had this boat since 1995.

People tend to love the canal once they get here.

Sometimes we have people that are from far, far away, and they come for a cruise, and they look around, and they just can't believe how great it is, they really like going under low bridges on our boat, we're tall, so you have to duck down for the low bridges, just like the song, "Low bridge, everybody down".

Low bridge, watch your heads.

(boat whirring) (guitar music) The Canal in Fairport, they call the second main street.

So it's extremely important, it's right in the middle of the village here between Fairport, Perinton, this whole general part of the canal, the canal is really, really part of the economy, and part of everything that people do.

There's businesses nearby, there's businesses right on the canal like us, and things like Fairport Canal Days, and the other festivals in this village and in the town bring lots of people to this area.

(intense guitar music) (visitors chattering) - This is the 48th year of Fairport Canal Days.

It was started by a group of local business owners, who realized that there were some bridge repairs, street renovations that was gonna impede how the community could find their businesses.

So they said, "We've gotta come up with something that'll make people wanna come here."

And they said, "Let's start a canal festival."

(upbeat jazz music) We have food vendors, and musical entertainment, we have five stages with over 60 performers.

I think we're up to about 200,000 visitors over a two-and-a-half-day period.

So the impact is huge for us in this village.

24 years ago, when we started the partnership office, and the Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor was established, there wasn't a lot of good direction for the community, we decided, this would be a great use of the canal, and feature the benefits of the leisure life activities that you can do along it, and that's one of the reasons Fairport Canal days was, you know, utilized.

It was like, this is a great opportunity to bring people into the area.

It's a huge history for us, and now, we're creating a new history through recreation and leisure.

(guitar music) - I think we're on an upward swing with the canal right now, we've definitely seen a rise in the excitement, and I think the bicentennial 200 years, you don't have that in every lifetime for something so significant, so I think that's drawing more people to be excited about the canal again too.

(upbeat music) - Over the course of the life of the Erie Canal, its use has changed so much, and transportation has evolved so much over the past 200 years, and today, it's largely used for recreation and heritage tourism.

This idea that man dominated nature, and that man conquered nature through this infrastructure, I think it's challenged on a daily basis when you just look at the canal today, because you'll see that there's a lot of different species interacting with the canal that are doing things that are completely out of human control, and there are, you know, challenges with any large ecological system, with manmade elements in it.

(gentle music) We're gonna need to have conversations that maybe, you know, don't necessarily fit in this fun leisure space.

We're gonna have to have a lot deeper conversations about the canal.

- There's no word in our language for environment.

They're all our relatives, they all need the same thing from Mother Earth that we need, and we all contribute to the balance of this world to live in peace and harmony and contentment.

And what this canal did was went right through the middle of our home, and disrupted it all.

(gentle music) It causes the pathways of the natural environment to be changed, and there's a lot that can't be put back.

Nature has a voice also, and it's about to be heard, and so we gotta pay attention, and do our best to put nature and Mother Earth at ease and help her heal.

(gentle music) - We're at the Northern Montezuma Wildlife Management Area, that's where our field office is here, 8,000 acres of public land that people come to for all variety reasons to recreate here, it's important wildlife habitat.

(gentle music) The canal runs through us via the Seneca River, cuts right through the WMA here, it cuts through the complex of marshes at Montezuma.

This was a tough place to build the canal, the water steps in the wrong direction, and this is very flat, so water settles here.

So for them to build the canal, they had to basically step it down, or lower the water.

And so after the canal, large tracks of the land that we call the Seneca River Flood Plain, now the Crusoe Creek Floodplain, Clyde River Floodplain, those are dry.

(gentle music) Right now, we've got a wetland enhancement construction project ongoing, we started this past winter in January, it's five sub-projects, and we finished the first, the largest of them just about two or three weeks ago, and we're starting to move into our second cut, our second construction site, and then, but probably by the end of the summer, we'll be done with all five.

(gentle music) We've repositioned it into what we call habitat mounds, and those have some benefit, as well, but largely what we're doing is lowering the elevation of the land, so we can kind of meet it where the water exists.

Some smaller amount of wildlife does use the area when it's dry, but a much greater variety of wildlife will use the area once you've added that water.

So that's the idea, to increase biodiversity, to increase the diversity of the vegetation community, to increase the habitat values for wildlife.

For us to pull off a large restoration or enhancement project like this, we always need partners.

That includes the folks from the New York Power Authority, the Canal Corp, and us at the DEC.

You know, I think we're all getting our heads together, figuring out like what it, you know, how is this canal and its tributaries, or its feeder canals, how is it gonna function, what are the maintenance concerns, how do the habitats along it function, can we make them better.

(gentle music) (ambient music) (equipment whirring) - The canal system, it can potentially act as a highway for aquatic invasive species, whether they're plants or animals or inverts.

Round goby are native to Eurasia, the Black and Caspian Sea.

and they were first introduced to North America in the Great Lakes in the early 1990s.

Natural dispersal have helped them move across New York In addition to that kind of natural movement, round goby historically have been used as bait.

Round goby first reached the Hudson River in, I believe, 2021, they'll be impacting all the macro invertebrates, the other small benthic fish in that area, they'll also feed on eggs of other fish, as well as can transfer several diseases between round goby and other fish species, so they can lead to mortality events.

If round goby were to make it into Lake Champlain, it would negatively impact economic activities within that region.

(ambient music) - Round goby can enter Lake Champlain through two different canals.

The canal to the north is the Chambly Canal on the Richelieu River so we are working on that with Canada and our Quebec partners And then the Champlain Canal to our south.

- We've got round goby present at the confluence of the Mohawk and the Hudson Rivers, and starting to move upstream towards Lock C1 on the Champlain Canal.

Part of our role at the Lake Champlain Basin Program is we have a rapid response task force with experts from New York, Vermont, and Quebec that get together regularly, and help utilize a rapid response fund to do early detection monitoring and management of invasive species in Lake Champlain, and the surrounding watershed.

We've been supporting USGS to do early detection monitoring of round goby using a number of different methods.

- We have seven sites that are being studied routinely, trying to screen for the possible upstream movement of round goby.

We've been trawling with a large net that we're dragging on the bottom looking for goby and we're electro fishing, again, looking for goby in the nearshore habitats.

We're also taking environmental DNA samples.

We captured, and identified, and took data on, and released say, you know, 50 fish here today, and probably even more than that at the upstream site at Fort Edwards, so those fish will be used to form a baseline data set of what the fish community looked like prior to round goby invasion.

Obviously, we're hoping that, you know, round goby don't reach this point, but if they were to reach this point, we would be able to actually quantify their impacts on the fish community by looking essentially at a before and after invasion, you know, study.

We've been sampling multiple times a year since 2022.

We anticipate we will likely continue that until the invasion front of round goby, you know, changes in some significant way that causes us to revisit that study plan.

- We developed a Threshold Action Response Plan and that's a partnership, a document that was developed between, by the DEC and NYPA Canals, some of those actions include scheduled locking the lock is emptied twice in a row, and that creates a lot of turbulence at the base, where round goby might be, to kind of flush them out.

Some of the species that we are concerned with other than round goby are things like zebra mussels, or quagga mussels, there are a number of aquatic plants that we're concerned with, hydrilla that has been reported in the Erie Canal, and it's being managed.

Water chestnut is a major problem in the Erie Canal, and the Mohawk section of that, and moving further West.

It's also in the Champlain Canal.

- The Canal Corporation, New York State DEC, and other partners who have vested interest in maintaining a healthy fishery in Lake Champlain, a thriving economy in the communities that live along the canals, and figuring out what the future use of the system is, it's largely recreational, the goal is to continue recreation through the Champlain Canal, and not interrupt, or end that use, but to look very seriously at how we can alter how people move through the system, and prevent the invasives from moving through the system.

(gentle music) - A big challenge going into the third century of operation of the canals is how can we be better stewards of this historical system, and how can we use technology to do a better job with that, to do it more efficiently, to do it safer, faster, better.

I think at canals we're definitely seeing the changing climate situation impact our infrastructure, whether it's prolonged periods of drought, and low water levels in our reservoir, followed by short duration, high-intensity storm events, which we're seeing more and more frequently, it puts more pressure on our aging infrastructure.

- The Upstate Flood Mitigation Task Force was a group convened by the state legislature in order to look at past flooding on the Mohawk and Oswego River Basins, and any impacts the canal operations would've had on it, as well as looking at the potential to modify any infrastructure or operational needs.

We've taken the task force recommendations, and we're trying to act on those as quickly as possible.

The recommendations regarding canal infrastructure itself, the Mohawk River has what's known as movable dams that are put in during navigation season, and removed at the end of navigation season, but they can also be removed in advance of a storm event, but it takes us a long time to get them out, and it's not exactly as safe as we would like it for our workers to work on those.

So one of the recommendations was to look at modernizing those, is there a way to do it faster, a way to do it safer to get them out, so in advance of a storm event, we can get them out of the river, and provide extra flow capacity.

(gentle music) - We'll never stop learning about the Erie Canal.

And so the idea that we have this fixed understanding of the canal and everything that's been said about it is kind of already been said, and we'll keep doubling down on that, it is in tension with the fact that we're always learning more about the canal, we're always learning more about its impacts.

(emotional ambient music) - We wanted to build a boat to commemorate the bicentennial of the Erie Canal, and we thought that we could lift up the craftsmanship of the day, and bring it back into modern times, but once we started lofting the boat and all that stuff, the whole project started to expand to take on the story of the Erie Canal, and the narrative of the Erie Canal, and we started learning much more about it, and that was largely inspired by the name of the boat, Seneca Chief.

You know, with times being what they are, and just understanding like why would they name this boat, we wanted to find out, we wanted to see if there was some history out there that said, "This boat was named Seneca Chief, because ..." (gentle music) - Brian and his team got ahold of me about five years ago asking about the name.

And you know, I did my research on Clinton over my lifetime, because that dispossession of New York, or it used to be Haudenosaunee lands, and so that dispossession of lands has kept me interested in state history, when in fact I'm not really interested in state history, I just need to know that to understand the story.

And so when Brian got ahold of me, you know, it was really, it took me down another path of the Clinton family, and trying to understand that, and come to terms with like, "Yeah, why did they name it the Seneca Chief?"

And as far as we know, we don't know.

You know, I think it has something to do with it being built on Seneca Lake.

I think it has something to do with Clinton's interest in Indigenous cultures, and flora, and fauna of New York that he was also kind of given it a sense of like honor.

So I think there's a little bit of everything in that.

That's kind of what I wanna do in my role as a historian and cultural anthropologist is to begin using those moments of the past to change our present, and hopefully our future, and that's what I'm excited about with Brian and the Maritime Center is that they actually do that, and you don't see it a lot.

(drum music) (boat honking) - And the name came up again, where, "Should we even use this name?"

Well, we started realizing that, number one, the name was called Seneca Chief, you should not change history, right?

But we've chosen to make this boat, and to build this boat.

Why did we do that?

Because we did understand that the bicentennial is an important thing for the United States.

But this is an opportunity to talk and to broaden the perspective, and broaden the narrative of the Erie Canal.

- The first thing that really needs to happen first are community-based conversations, and figure out what people want out of the canal, and so some people do want the canal, and we see that here today with the celebration, and it serves a purpose, at least symbolically.

And so if it's going to serve a symbolic purpose, then how do we make it more tangible for the other people who don't feel part of it, and that starts with a discussion and a conversation.

This is a chance for us to learn from the past of where we weren't inclusive, in the inclusion of other voices.

(gentle music) - It's a very complex and disastrous move to the Native Americans of building this Erie Canal, and the plans to get to it.

All of our communities are still intact and the Onondaga Nation still functions as a government, and as the fire keepers of the Confederacy, as the fire keepers of the Haudenosaunee is the capital.

And we still function under the leadership of our traditional Chiefs and Clan Mothers.

And so we're still in existence, and we're not going anywheres.

(gentle music) And we're still arguing for our rights today to the land, Organization of American States is where we have our human rights case today to be heard.

Our original instructions are to live in peace and harmony with Mother Earth and Mother Nature, and we still do our very best that we can today as Onondagas to carry that message on, so that future generations will have the abundance of good life that we know it can exist here on Mother Earth.

- I think it's important to recognize that there's some better possibilities in the future that we could start shaping today, and I think the Bicentennial is an opportunity for that, but I don't want it to be one that passes us by, I want us to have those deep conversations that are uncomfortable, that are important, and could really create a change in this infrastructure, in the legacy that it has.

- What we're working on right now is plans to hopefully redo the entire inside of the museum, so that these different histories, the histories of Black Americans, the Haudenosaunee, labor history, women's history, women are hardly mentioned in this museum at all, that they are interwoven into the whole museum narrative, and that it doesn't just feel like, "Oh, this is the Erie Canal narrative, and here's a panel about this extra stuff."

We're not rewriting everything, we're just adding things back.

(gentle music) - It's our hope that as we go down our 28 stops all the way to New York City, we're going to connect, and have conversations, not only about what the Erie Canal is and was, but also about the role of Indigenous culture and history throughout this story, as well.

I do think that we must take both ideas together, and live with them, and sit with them, and say, "Well, what do we learn, what have we learned from that, and how are we going forward with that?"

(gentle music ending) - [Announcer] Funding for "Reflections on the Erie Canal" is provided by the New York State Canal Corporation.

- This year, New York State commemorates 200 years of the iconic and historic Erie Canal.

This incredible waterway was completed in 1825, and it transformed our state into a bustling hub of commerce and innovation, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean.

We are proud to partner with WMHT Public Media to share the fascinating stories of the people who built and traveled the canal, and how it connects the economic, cultural, and recreational landscape of our nation.

I hope you enjoyed this continuing journey on the Erie Canal.