Great Lakes region Great Lakes region The Great Lakes region of North America is a bi-national Canada-American region that includes portions of the eight U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as well as the Canadian province of Ontario. The region centers on the Great Lakes and forms a distinctive historical, economic, and cultural identity. A portion of the region also encompasses the Great Lakes Megalopolis. The Great Lakes Commission, authorized by the region's American states and Province of Ontario, and the additional Canadian Province of Quebec, comprises a bi-national authority with specified powers to protect and
Great Lakes region Hudson, Mohawk and Susquehanna form an arc of watersheds east to The Atlantic. The Great Lakes region, as distinct from the Great Lakes Basin, defines a unit of sub-national political entities defined by the U.S. states and the Canadian Province of Ontario encompassing the Great Lakes watershed, and the states and Province bordering one or more of the Great Lakes. Prior to European settlement, Iroquoian people lived around Lakes Erie and Ontario, Algonquian peoples around most of the rest, and a variety of other indigenous nation-peoples including the Lakotan, Ojibwa, Illinois, Pottawatmie, Huron, Shawnee, Erie, Fox, Miami, Crow and Ho-Chunk