Great Lakes Charter an Annex to the Great Lakes Charter. This led to the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement of 2005 and the Great Lakes Compact which became effective in 2008. The Council of Great Lakes Governors serves as secretariat to the Governors' and Premiers' Regional Body created by the Agreement and the Governors' Compact Council created by the Compact. Great Lakes Charter The Great Lakes Charter is a good-faith agreement among the Governors of the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the Premiers of the Canadian provinces of Ontario 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