In the only available wild rice spot on Lake Superior, Natives from different nations gather for the wild rice harvest season. The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission brought their experts in harvest alongside Natural Resource Department.

From interns to directors of the island museum, many shared their experiences and skills used for the harvest. As the word in Ojibwe for wild rice is “manomen”

“It’s an incredibly special and sacred food that arrives on top of the water and is easy to harvest right before the winter months. So, in some of the older epics, I mean, it was just an incredible gift that would arrive and get everybody ready for winter”

“We use it for food and ceremonies and just special occasions. And it’s just a big staple in our diets.”

A woman from the natural resource department of Bad River, Aiyana Perry, expanded on how they are training the community how to collect and treat wild rice during harvest to allow the ecosystem to grow and remained balanced.

“So today we went out bundling, which is a good way to collect wild rice for receding. And what we do is we collect basswood to harvest it for twine. And we use that twine to collect a good handful of wild rice, manoomin. And we wrap it around and wrap it kind of like twine-wise up. And then we wrap it back down and then we tie it. And then when the bundle is starting to droop, that’s when we start cutting the twine, collecting the wild rice. And then that’s when we hit it into the canoe.”

Passing on the Bundle

Members not only harvested the rice for food, but they also used this time to pass the techniques onto the next generation. All returning to the expert, Kathleen Smith, Manoman Gunawing Dunn “She who cares for wild rice”

“So that’s the main purpose of a rice camp is showing our community members on how to make these precious tools to be able to go and sustainably harvest rice in the most light hand on the land kind of way.”

“So, in this particular area, this is probably one of the most known wild rice, Manoman beds, actually right next to Gichigumi, right on Big Sea here. So, it’s really relevant in that way because they’re very few and far between. So, we tried to grow one out in our community,”

“I think it’s really important because you’re passing on the knowledge to the children who will eventually grow up to teach their own children, keep going for years and years, just to keep the traditions alive”