Mahnomin -Wild Rice - The Sacred Food of Anishinaabe

Since time ancestral harvesting wild rice in the clean lakes and streams of northern Wisconsin has been the way of life. Every fall canoes slide out into "the food that grows upon the water" as the Anishinaabe were directed to do. Harvesting wild rice under turquoise skies on crisp autumn days has become a way of life with "niijii's", friends and neighbors of the Ojibwa Native Americans. click here for live stream broadcast

Gathering and processing "The Sacred Harvest" Wild Rice

	To learn more about what Wild Rice means to native people visit www.protecttheearth.org

Radio producers Nick Vander Puy and Sandy Lyon enjoy gathering wild rice every year on local lakes and rivers.  They say the harvest offers some excellent food, along with, spiritual contentment.  Vander Puy talks about this past ricing season.

 

Sandy and I are coming off a month of gathering wild rice.  What the Anishinaabe call “manoomike geezis,”  the rice making moon.

 

The wild rice harvest feeds our body and soul.

 

It’s been since late August, almost every day now, we’ve loaded up the canoe, the cedar ricing sticks, and tamarack push pole, on the back of our old truck.  We pack a thermos, sandwiches, and on lucky days, even DONUTS.

 

Our country is blessed with many wild rice lakes, less than twenty minutes from our home in northwestern Wisconsin.

 

We gather enough wild rice every year to feed the family, sell a bit, and give some away.

 

As we launch the canoe into the wild rice stands,  I pole the canoe through the stalks, while Sandy gently knocks, with soft cedar ricing sticks, the seed heads,  into the bottom of the canoe.

 

After awhile the canoe bottom looks like a green and yellow porcupine.  It’s moving, and in fact, when you look close you see little wiggling bugs and white rice worms.  The elders say the best rice has plenty of critters.

 

These northern Wisconsin wild rice lakes  really are pretty wild.

 

Not many houses, lawns, or machines.  You seldom see the hand of man.

 

But oh, what an abundance on the wild rice lakes!  Tawny, brown and yellow wild rice stalks stretch across the water.  Looking into the  tea colored shallows you see hundreds, thousands of minnows.  All the time Sandy and I  spend outdoors the only place we saw frogs this year were here on the wild rice lakes and rivers.

 

Kingfisher birds dodge back and forth  down the shores.  Early in the season, huge flocks of redwing blackbirds vent the air overhead. Little, brown Sora rails try to conceal themselves , take wing for a short distance then suddenly drop into the marsh.

 

I pole through the rice and begin daydreaming.  Sandy senses the shift and  kids me about letting the canoe drift out of the ripe rice into the ozone. Leaving the industrial world of cars, stores, factories, and  computers behind,  I drift further into day-dream. 

 

The shore is alive with willow and tamarack.  A large white pine, looking like the unfolding skirt of an ancient woman, graces the sky.

 

I pause for a moment. I hear something.  Midewiiosh.  The sound in the pine trees.  Midewiiosh.  It’s also the Indian name of our teacher,  Joe Ackley from Mole Lake. 

 

Joe walked into the spirit world several years ago, but back in the early nineteen nineties he taught us about ricing.

 

Stuff like how to carve the ricing sticks from cedar to avoid damaging the rice.  Harvesting the tamarack in the winter from a frozen swamp  to make a push pole .  How to parch, and dance, and winnow and finish the rice for eating.  And how to say thank you, or in the Ojibwe language miigwech

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This past September 11 we planted some wild rice at a small headwaters creek down the road. We planted wild rice the past two years at the same spot to honor those who’ve passed on and celebrate life.  And we’re happy to report that the rice is taking, the stalks are emerging, the seed heads falling back into the water.  To make food for the other animals and us someday as well.

 

And the mahnomin, without the use of oil, or gas, or tractors, the wild rice keeps coming back, season after season, a gift from the Creator.

 

I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network

 

 

 Photos  by Sandy Lyon

For detailed information about wild rice and the Anishinaabe visit the web site for the

Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wild Commission www.glifwc.org

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