Content note:

This episode contains discussion of racial violence, lynching, and the racially motivated expulsion of an entire Black community in 1912 Georgia. It also includes detailed accounts of multiple drowning deaths and body recovery. Additionally, this episode covers the colonial erasure of Indigenous spiritual tradition. Listener discretion is advised.

In July 2023, three men died at Lake Lanier in Georgia in a single weekend. Lake Lanier is one of the most visited recreational lakes in the United States. It is also one of the deadliest — and once you understand what is sitting beneath its surface, the death toll stops feeling like a coincidence.

This week, we visit two dangerous lakes and hear their haunting tales.

LAKE LANIER

Georgia Department of Natural Resources — annual drowning reports (primary source for all death statistics)

Forsyth County Sheriff's Office — official press release, Thomas Milner death, July 2023

Patrick Phillips, Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (W.W. Norton, 2016) — primary source for

1912 Forsyth County racial history

CNN — interview with rescue diver Buck Buchanan, 2020

Adventures in Cemetery Hopping — Alta Vista Cemetery, Delia Parker Young / Susie Roberts grave

documentation

OKANAGAN LAKE

BC Coroners Service — annual provincial drowning reports (primary source for all death statistics)

Elder Marlene Squakin (Yamxwa) — N'ha-a-itk tradition, documented via Summerland Museum / Castanet.net,

March 2024

Summerland Museum — working with Syilx knowledge keepers on N'ha-a-itk cultural framing

BC Wildlife Act, 1989 — Ogopogo protected status

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