Global Rice News

Manoomin, or wild rice, is one of few grains native to North America, mostly found in the Great Lakes region and Midwestern states and is related to, but not quite the same as rice.

Thousands of years ago, one of the seven prophecies foretold the Anishinaabek to travel from the eastern coast of what is now the United States and Canada until they came upon “food that grows on water” — that food was manoomin.

“We (Anishinaabek) have always maintained a very close relationship to manoomin, but colonial industry and land alterations have negatively affected that,” said Jerry Jondreau.

Jondreau is from Wiikwedong, or the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in the Upper Peninsula. He has harvested manoomin for the past 15 years, after being taught by Roger LaBine of the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Indians.

The word manoomin translates in Anishinaabemowin or Ojibwemowin, to “the good berry,” a literal reflection of the cultural importance it has to Anishinaabek communities.

That cultural connection to manoomin (Zizania palustris and Zizania aquatica) in Michigan has been detrimentally affected because of the loss of traditional manoomin beds, Jondreau said.

The long, slender aquatic grass, with purple tips and fruiting grains, grows best in near-perfect shallow, slow-moving waters, and is quite sensitive to fluctuations of water level and temperature.

Water pollution from urbanization and contamination, along with invasive species, alter aquatic ecosystems and cause the Great Lake’s rice populations to crash, resulting in more than 90 percent of the traditional manoomin beds lost from Anishinaabek communities.

Jondreau’s family has to travel to Minnesota or sometimes Wisconsin to harvest manoomin because of the legacy contaminants left behind from the Keweenaw Peninsula’s copper-mining and damage done by the timber industry.

“Our ancestors were here because of manoomin,” Jondreau said, “but now the prevalence of one of our staple foods in Michigan is almost gone.”

A recent $100,000 state grant was announced by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy to support a wild rice stewardship plan between multiple agencies and the 12 federally recognized tribes.

The two-year grant from EGLE’s Michigan Great Lakes Protection Fund will go to the University of Michigan Water Center and will focus on collaborative, user-driven research, in partnership with the Michigan Wild Rice Initiative Team to develop the Tribal-State Manoomin Stewardship Plan.

Since the formal formation in 2017, the MWRIT includes representatives from each of the tribes, EGLE, the state Department of Natural Resources, Agriculture and Rural Development and Transportation.

“Funding provided through the Michigan Great Lakes Protection Fund will fill a critical capacity gap for the MWRIT and allow the group to move this long-discussed planning effort forward,” Danielle Fegan, wildlife assessment biologist with the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and co-chair of the MWRIT, said in a prepared statement.

The project advances a priority recommendation in the 2016 Michigan Water Strategy for the state to work with federally recognized tribes and other stakeholders with an interest in preserving and enhancing wild rice resources across the state.

The stewardship plan involves engaging with the sovereign nations to identify all elements of the plan.

For many years, Michigan tribes have put in time, money, and resources into “understanding how to help our relatives,” said Alison Smart, the environmental division manager for the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.

Smart said that Anishinaabek tribes expressed the importance of protecting wild rice beds in Michigan to state agencies.

“It’s important that the stewardship plan is culturally regarded,” Smart said.

The plan will lead to more coordinated research for the protection and restoration of wild rice in Michigan.

LRBOI’s natural resource department began working with manoomin in the early 2000s, explained Smart. Other tribes in Michigan, like the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, began wild rice management in the early ‘90s. Restoration efforts have long been a critical priority for the tribes, Smart said.

LRBOI’s program ramped up in 2010 with a partnership with Central Michigan University to study habitat variables of wild rice within the tribe’s jurisdiction.

The collaboration took place in the next several years, and the LRBOI was able to document manoomin’s characteristics, which included a health assessment of several wild rice beds throughout three counties.

“It’s not a well-documented plant as far as where it still grows,” Smart said — a concern for what she stated as an “uptick” in interest for harvesting, which could lead to over-harvesting or not harvesting the rice properly.

“That’s where collaboration with the other agencies comes in because Michigan tribes unfortunately do not have that kind of jurisdiction.”

Jondreau pushes for strict regulations on wild rice harvesting, because other traditional foods to the Anishinaabek, such as chaga, have been negatively affected by non-tribal over-harvesting.

With the stewardship plan, Jondreau hopes it will help protect tribal-citizens’ rights to the sacred grain, and calls for the designation of manoomin to be placed as a protected species before the state begins to look at it as a resource.

“We need to address the authority and respect for the protection of manoomin,” he said.

Source: https://www.record-eagle.com/news/efforts-grow-to-protect-sacred-grain-from-over-harvest/article_d6f2e374-a617-11ec-867b-970295a67cc5.html