As a group of four young adults drag a tarp of freshly harvested wild rice, or manoomin, into the sun to dry, Kathleen Smith explains the importance of this stage in the process.
“It's important to pay attention to it as soon as it dips from the sun area, then you can keep following the sun so it will continue to dry,” Smith told them. “We're getting in the process of turning this beautiful medicine into food, so it's really integral that we get it to start drying.”
Manoomin is a being to the Ojibwe people and as such Smith explains the respect that goes into the harvest process.
“We are petitioning this manoomin to become food to sustain our way of life. It's really important to really honor those manidoo,” said Smith. “When we do these asks, that's what we're doing, is we're asking for this beautiful relative from that second order of creation to offer themselves up to us.”
Smith is a Keweenaw Bay Indian Community tribal member and works for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission as the Manoomin Ganawandang, she who takes care of the rice. GLIWFC along with UW Trout Lake Station hosted the Intertribal Manoomin Camp at the North Lakeland Discovery Center in Manitowish Waters.
The intertribal camp brought in people from several states, including those from different tribes as well as non-tribal people.
Smith says it’s part of a resurgence into connecting people with the land.
“My dream is always to have an inter-tribal manoomin camp to include everybody, all walks of life, no matter what your belief system is, or your background, but to get us excited about harvesting good, clean food, and also to share teachings and to have a space that is inclusive for everybody,” said Smith.
UW Trout Lake Station in Boulder Junction has been working with GLIFWC and the Lac du Flambeau Tribe on its wild rice research program. They’ve been trying to figure out why it’s been in decline.
“Western science sometimes doesn't observe those cultural practices or that long held knowledge. In this project, it's been really educational to bring in this harvest and all of the materials that are being used, the cultural practices, and the knowledge about ripeness and where we're at,” said Trout Lake Station Director Gretchen Gerrish. “We've gotten better about recognizing that this is all part of the science.”
The intertribal rice camp came from the work they’re doing as part of the America the Beautiful Challenge grant.
The camp, held in early September, featured various aspects of the harvesting process.
People learned to make rice knockers and push polls used for collecting the rice. They made moccasins and paddles for the parching process.
Goodeagle Kitchen from Oneida provided the food which was sourced from within communities.
“Prior to colonization, we would be doing this every year,” said Esiban Parent, a Lac Courte Oreilles tribal member and GLIFWC’s Manoomin Wiidookaage, or wild rice helper. He was one of the main organizers of the camp. Parent says the heart of it is about community.
“When you can come together like this and realize that in a real way, you're depending on certain people with skills to share their knowledge, everyone's coming together with this wild rice,” said Parent. “A lot of my outreach that I do is kind of focused around how manoomin connects us. Wild rice connects us. We’re all connected. This is just one of those practices that reminds us of that.”
Jennifer Michaels came from Chicago to participate in the camp. She works with teams studying wild rice and says she is culturally tied to Ojibwe, Potawatomi and Kickapoo, but didn’t grow up learning any of their teachings.
“Just seeing people here, sharing lessons, sharing laughs, meeting new people, being in community, that's always a highlight for me,” said Michaels. “I just feel whole being a part of the experience of learning about manoomin.”
Red Cliff Tribal Member and UW Madison Graduate Student Sagen Quale was the other main organizer for this rice camp.
She says she grew up eating wild rice, but it wasn’t until the last couple of years that she got heavily immersed in it.
"My Ojibwe name is ‘she harvest wild rice woman’. I was given that name three summers ago now,” said Quale. “When you're given a name, there's kind of alignments and meanings behind that that are bigger than ourselves.”
Like Parent, Quale says the sense of community is what drives the camp and makes it successful.
“We have GLIFWC, we have Bad River, we have Menominee, we have LCO, Red Cliff, my own tribe. All these different people, all these different representations of tribal nations and non-tribal folks too that are all interested in caring and stewarding manoomin in a good way,” said Quale.
Quale knows she’ll leave the camp tired but fulfilled.
She hopes everyone who participated leaves the rice camp with new knowledge, new skills, and new connections.
“You take teachings as they're given to you and take them forward as you can,” said Quale.
