April 8, 2026
The Water Walkers
Water is the quiet thing we all depend on, until someone treats it like it’s sacred and suddenly you can’t stop paying attention. From the floor of the NCRA conference in Winston-Salem, we talk with author and educator Carol Tremboth about the Native Water Walkers and why their prayerful, relentless miles around the Great Lakes belong in every conversation about clean water, environmental stewardship, and Indigenous activism. Carol shares how her books bring readers to the shoreline, where sacred words, tobacco offerings, and community connection turn “water protection” into something you can feel.
Website: spotlight4success.com
00:00 - Welcome From The NCRA Conference
00:44 - The Native Water Walkers Movement
04:27 - Writing Harriet Tubman With Heart
07:19 - NASA Ambassador And Artemis II
11:04 - Final Thoughts And Where To Buy
WEBVTT
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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.
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I am Devin Pendoza, your host.
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We are here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, at the NCRA conference.
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And we are so excited to have with us our special guest, and that is Carol Tromboth.
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Very nice to meet you, Carol.
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Nice to meet you too.
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All right.
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I'm just uh pleased that I was able at this point to just connect because I am adamant with like most people who are educators and authors to connect with other people because it's important for each for each other, but also for our planet.
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I guess to begin with, um the idea was that we're going to talk about me as an author.
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And I have written five books, and I'm going to hold this up, five books about the native water walkers.
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And I mean the native water walkers who came from the Anishinaabe.
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The Anishinaabe live up in the upper part of Michigan and Canada.
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But in Michigan there were what we call three fires, and they were the Ottawa, the Pottawanami, and the Ojibwe.
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And their chief of the three fires told people that he had a vision, and the vision was that we need to take care of the water, or in 30 years we're going to be in big trouble.
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And very serious trouble.
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So they asked, What can we do?
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So a woman by the name of Josephine Mandeman took up the challenge and she said, We're going to begin water walking.
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And this was serious water walking.
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These folks, these native people, have walked now 20,000 miles.
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I was on the Ohio River Walk, can you imagine?
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But what they do is it's like they go to a water, a lake, a river or waterway, and they go to that area right at the shoreline, and they say sacred words to the water, they say sacred prayers for the water, and they leave their gift of tobacco.
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And then they begin water walking at least 30, 40, or 50 miles a day.
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They have two vans, and a person will go out, or maybe three vans, but they water, uh they walk for um 20 minutes, then it's like leapfrog.
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They go back and forth and they keep walking, and again, they the idea is connecting, connecting with the water, because what they're actually doing on another level is energizing the water.
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So they have walked, the first water walk was around Lake Superior.
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And my books in each of these books always shows a map of their experience of walking, how far they walked around this one, Lake Superior.
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And when they walk, um they you know they connect with a lot of people, and also they walked Lake Superior 1,372 miles.
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Then they walked around Lake Michigan.
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They did it in two parts, uh the upper part of Lake Michigan and then the lower part.
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And that book is my second book in this series called The Water The Water Walkers.
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It's called Stepping Stones.
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The third water walk was around Lake Huron, and that is called Ripples and Waves.
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The fourth one was around Lake Ontario, and the last one was Lake Erie.
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They completed the circle of the chain of Great Lakes.
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Then they had walked down the Mississippi, they began in January and walked for four months from Itasca State Park up in Minnesota.
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I've been there all the way down to New Orleans.
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Four months of walking.
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And the biggest water walk was from the four corners, meaning they had people walking from the Atlantic, Pacific, Hudson Bay, Gulf of Mexico, and what they did was brought the healing waters of the ocean into the heart of North America, which is Lake Superior.
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So I've been excited to do these books.
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I'm now at a challenge point.
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Now that they've walked all these, where do I go next with them?
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To the big water walks, uh, maybe a middle school, because there are two big characters in these books, which are Grandmother and the little girl Mai.
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Native people do things in four, so in the first book you meet up with four animals and she becomes a good water walker.
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Each book has an element of four.
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So moving on, I also wrote a book about Harriet Tubman called Out of Slavery.
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And uh this book, it ended up, I was as an educator.
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Uh educators have to do 30 hours or 35 hours of continuing education.
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And when that happens, you're allowed to you know explore other areas to do this in.
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So I went to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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I encourage every teacher who is listening to this to do this, apply.
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It's very competitive, yes, but in that you will learn so much.
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But beyond that, they treat you very well.
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They give you room and board, they feed you, they teach you, and they uh give you a stipend.
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And so I was in Missouri because we were talking about the guerrilla warfare that preceded the Civil War.
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And they the uh instructor at the time, uh Dr.
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Neely from University of Missouri, he at one point told a story.
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And when he was done, I went in the bathroom and I couldn't come out because I was crying so hard.
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The reason why is because I learned about 267 men who were uh in the battles who were thrown into a mass grave.
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Americans don't like that, and it really affected me, and I I was just crying my head off all the way back from Missouri to Detroit.
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When I got home, I read, I started and I wrote the this chapter nine called Roses at the Race Course, because at one point, and people know about this too, that they consider that um when they had a parade, this was after Lincoln died, two weeks after he died.
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Most people don't know what happened, but down in uh Charleston, uh they had a parade of 10,000 people.
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And of those 10,000 people, they were led by children and the uh uh Massachusetts 64th, uh the first black regiment authorized by Congress, they went around in step in music and drumming around the Washington race course.
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And Harriet Tubman witnessed the battle.
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So I then read a coffee table book that said Harriet Tubman actually, you know, was there and served Colonel Shaw, who was the leader of the 64th Massachusetts.
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She served him his last meal.
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And then I was off.
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I knew I had to do something big.
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She's an American icon.
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It is important at this time to recognize that.
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And I am a booster for the American from the people out of uh Auburn, New York, her hometown with her family, and they um, you know, they need donations to help keep this going.
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But hopefully, we've got our fingers crossed that she will end up being on the$20 bill.
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So beyond that, I do one more thing that I love since I've retired, and that is I'm also a solar system ambassador for NASA.
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And uh again, I was out in Utah and I went to the American uh Association of School Librarians, and at 10 o'clock in the morning, I went similar to this, I walked up to a session and I said, How did you get to do this?
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And she said, NASA opens up once a year for one month in September a gateway where you can apply.
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You had to have five references and a long, lengthy uh in uh interview process and um application.
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And my principal said, she says, it was very, very detailed.
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At any rate, I do come from a family of um engineers.
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My my cousin, Richard Hermling, he worked for NASA in building 32.
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He was the director of testing all spacesuits, and he was also someone who helped design the spacesuits.
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The one in the Smithsonian was part of his design.
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So, with that, and I come from a family of engineers.
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My oldest son's an engineer, my uh son-in-law is an engineer with Northrop Grumman, who supplies NASA with the rocketry, and also uh one more thing, and my middle son is the uh director, I have to always remember his title, but director of the brand new chip factory out in Phoenix, Anthem, Arizona.
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Okay.
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So, with all that, I love talking about NASA, and we are coming up to Artemis II.
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People wonder what the heck is Artemis II?
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Well, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo.
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Apollo drove the chariot across the sky.
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All of the people who went to the moon so far have uh always been uh from America, they've always been um Caucasian, but that is changing.
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There are four astronauts.
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Reed Wiseman is the uh commander, but Victor Glover is an African-American man, he is the pilot.
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Third person on the wheel is uh Jeremy Hansen, first person from Canada going to the moon.
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Fourth person, Christina Cook.
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Christina Cook was born and growing in Rapids, Michigan, but she her family moved to uh this area in Durham, and she grew up here and was educated here and uh got her degrees here.
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First woman going to the moon.
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So we no longer call them manned and unmanned, we call them crude and uncrude.
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So uh we are big in for some big surprises.
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It was March 1st they were supposed to go, but now it will be April 1st.
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Hopefully, and everything has been uh they do a wet rehearsal the week before just the week before, but they found initially a hydrogen leak and they thought it was an easy fix, but they pushed it right back to the assembly building and did it.
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So April 1st is coming, and I hope everyone is on their toes and ready to watch because this is going to be breathtaking.
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They have built SLS, which is a space launch system.
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It is a generational rocket.
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It is a rocket that will take us not only to the moon, it is a rocket that will take us to Mars.
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And so that is very important.
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They've already tested the rocket, everything's fine.
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So this is with human uh the human family on board this time.
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By 2030, they expect to be on the moon.
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On the moon.
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And they will they will position themselves on the South Pole because they believe that there is water.
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They've already sent a uh one of the ejected uh items to the crater there, and out came a plume 10 miles out of water.
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So they know there's water there, that's why we're going to the South Pole.
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But it's a very interesting ride we're all about to take place because um this is the generation our children and grandchildren will be involved in this, and it's huge.
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It is the next paradigm that's to come for all of us.
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So strap yourself in, get your seatbelt on, and be ready for a fantastic ride.
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It's about to happen.
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Oh, wonderful! Well, thank you.
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Appreciate it, Carol Trumbat.
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It was fun, so please go out if you have time.
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My books are on Amazon.
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I just love the water walkers, they need to be noticed.
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Native people need to be noticed.
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They're the first environmentalists, and um Harriet Tubman is an American icon.
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She too touches all our heart with our with our courage.
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But I thank you for taking the time to let me come here and talk.
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Uh, because you never know, you know, who's on board.
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But this reading conference is wonderful.
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They have a wonderful group of people here that promote right writers, authors, and teachers.
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I'm a teacher of 30 years.
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All right.
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Thank you for your services.
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Thank you again.
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Thank you.
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All right.
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Thank you, Carl.
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