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Ricing was harvested from August to the beginning of September. A woman and a man would set out in a canoe, with the woman facing the rear. The man would "propel" the canoe using a sapling approximately ten feet long, depending on where they are gathering the rice. While the man would propel them through the rice stalks, the woman would use a cedar stick, about three feet long, and would pull the rice stalks in towards the boat, and with using a shorter stick would knock the rice stalks of
their ripened grains into the canoe.
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BAY MILLS —
A decade after the first wild rice seed was planted in the waters of Spectacle Lake, a group of Bay Mills members with assistance from Ojibwe Charter School students and staff, harvested the first batch of the indigenous species Thursday, Sept. 23.
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Cultivated wild rice, or paddy rice, is grown in diked paddies in
Minnesota and California. The cultivated wild rice industry began in
the 1950s when researchers at the University of Minnesota, through
cross breeding, created a variety of wild rice that could grow in a
paddy and be harvested mechanically with a combine.
Natural lake wild rice is not planted, nor is it cultivated in the
modern sense of the term. It is, however, maintained by traditional
eco-friendly methods. It grows naturally on the lakes and rivers of
northern Minnesota, and other parts of the Great Lakes region, and is
harvested by two people in a canoe using a push pole and two wooden
sticks.
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Ken Foster and his colleague Zan Hua Zahn of NORCAL Wild Rice from
California have successfully patented wild rice. That patent is on
zizania palustris (Northern Wild Rice), which uses "cytoplasmic genetic
male sterility," allowing for better commercial production of wild
rice. Traditionally wild rice grows around the Great Lakes, Minnesota,
and parts of Canada. The first step to take away the “Good
Grain” from
the Indians and to domesticate it. That means it was changed so it
could be industrially harvested. Patty rice production began in 1968.
The rice was 20% of Minnesota’s crop. By 1983 California's
paddy rice
output was already greater in volume than the natural wild rice
harvested in Minnesota..
Check out the White Earth Land Restoration Project, run by former Nish Vice Presidential candidate Winona LaDuke. Learn about her fight to save the genetic integrity of our sacred food.
Anishinaabeg and their supporters also get active around protecting the sanctity of our rice at Save Wild Rice.
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Sponsored by a generous grant from the National Science Foundation with cooperation from the University of Michigan School of Information and Bay Mills Community College. © Bay Mills Indian Community