https://archive.md/be704
"ODANAH, Wisc. — I’m speeding along the Bad River in a flat-bottomed boat, wind
whipping around us. Next to me sits Robert Blanchard, the 70-year-old tribal
chairman and executive director of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior
Chippewa, a people also known as the Ojibwe.
As the boat weaves through the twisting river leading out to Lake Superior in
the northernmost reaches of Wisconsin, Blanchard takes out a small bag of loose
tobacco. Pinching a tuft, he scatters it off the side — an offering to the
Great Spirit, he explains, to ask for a safe and satisfactory harvest.
As we turn another corner, we see the site of the harvest: the Kakagon Sloughs.
Swaths of golden grass jut several feet out of the shallow water, the stalks
gracefully bending backward and forward in the wind.
This is wild rice. The Ojibwe people call it manoomin, meaning “the good berry”
or the “the good seed.” It is almost nothing like white rice. Slender and up to
nearly an inch long, the kernels can be colored from walnut brown to purplish
black. Toothsome with a toasty, nutty tone, it is a foreground flavor, not a
background filler. (“And it smells like a cool breeze,” I was later told by
Elena Terry, a chef and member of the Ho-Chunk Nation.) Several native species
of wild rice grow in the Midwest, along the Gulf Coast, in Texas, and
elsewhere, but wild rice is also commercially cultivated, chiefly in paddy
fields in California and Minnesota.
Though the grain in the Kakagon Sloughs was harvested two months earlier, it’s
an honor to even see these beds on this sunny October afternoon last year.
Non-tribal members are not permitted in the sloughs and are prohibited from
harvesting manoomin here, though it is legal to gather it with a permit
elsewhere in the state. I was only allowed as a guest of Blanchard, who is
concerned about the physical and existential threats facing manoomin, a pillar
of Ojibwe life providing both food and faith in a higher power.
Manoomin is under attack from what seems like every direction. As an annual, it
has trouble competing with perennials. Invasive plant species, such as purple
loosestrife, are crowding it out. Boat wakes can decimate the plants early in
the growing season. Runoff from agriculture and timber harvesting on the
shoreline can damage or kill it, as can other forms of pollution. And tribal
members worry that a pipeline running through their reservation could rupture
and contaminate the waterways.
Then there’s climate change, which is wreaking havoc on manoomin. “It’s
susceptible to warm overnight temperatures because humidity can exacerbate
pathogens and fungi,” says Rob Croll, the climate change program coordinator
for the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission. “And it’s susceptible to
shorter cold weather periods and less ice cover, which affects germination.” In
the agency’s 2023 assessment of climate change vulnerability, Croll and his
collaborators determined that manoomin is at greatest risk."
Original at
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2025/10/06/wild-rice-ojibwe-wisconsin/>
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
