#manoomin — Public Fediverse posts

#WildRice and the #Ojibwe

by Jessica Milgroom

"Wild rice is a food of great historical, spiritual, and cultural importance for Ojibwe people. After #colonization disrupted their #TraditionalFoodSystem, however, they could no longer depend on stores of wild rice for food all year round. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, this traditional staple was appropriated by white entrepreneurs and marketed as a gourmet commodity. Native and non-Native people alike began to harvest rice to sell it for cash, threatening the health of the natural stands of the crop. This lucrative market paved the way for domestication of the plant, and farmers began cultivating it in paddies in the late 1960s. In the twenty-first century, many Ojibwe and other Native people are fighting to sustain the hand-harvested wild rice tradition and to protect wild rice beds.

"Ojibwe people arrived in present-day Minnesota in the 1600s after a long migration from the east coast of the United States that lasted many centuries. Together with their #Anishinaabe kin, the #Potawatomi and #Odawa, they followed a vision that told them to search for their homeland in a place 'where the food floats on water.' The Ojibwe recognized this as the wild rice they found growing around Lake Superior (#Gichigami), and they settled on the sacred site of what is known today as #MadelineIsland (#Mooningwaanekaaning).

"In the Ojibwe language, wild rice (Zizania palustris) is called #manoomin, which is related by analogy to a word (minomin) meaning 'good berry.' It is a highly nutritious wild grain that is gathered from lakes and waterways by canoe in late August and early September, during the wild rice moon (manoominike giizis).

"Before contact with Europeans and as late as the early twentieth century, Ojibwe people depended on wild rice as a crucial part of their diet, together with berries, fish, meat, vegetables, and maple sugar. They moved their camps throughout the year, depending on the activities of seasonal food gathering. In autumn, families moved to a location close to a lake with a promising stand of wild rice and stayed there for the duration of the season. Men hunted and fished while women harvested rice, preparing food for their families to eat throughout the following winter, spring, and summer."

Read more:
https://www3.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/wild-rice-and-ojibwe

#TraditionalFoods #WildRiceHistory #NativeAmericanHistory #FoodHistory #IndigenousPeople #IndigenousPeoplesDay #FoodSovereignty #SolarPunkSunday

#Resistance to #Line3Pipeline Seeks to Save Sacred #Manoomin

By Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot

https://unicornriot.ninja/2017/resistance-line-3-pipeline-seeks-save-sacred-manoomin/

#WildRice #Objiwe #TradtionalFoods #Sustenance #Line3 #Pollution #Pipelines #WaterIsLife #FoodIsLife

Pressure Builds to Protect #Manoomin (#WildRice)

"Laws aren’t always enough. We’re seeing a loss of wild rice all over #Minnesota. Threats from #ClimateChange, threats from pollution, threats from landowners that are ripping out wild rice stocks."

By Wabigonikwe, Contributor June 13, 2025, via @UnicornRiot

Excerpt: "Wild rice, often known by its #Objiwe name, manoomin, has been a means of sustenance for #DakotaLakota and Ojibwe peoples since time immemorial. It is the reason that Ojibwe people migrated to this region, 'the land where food grows on water' – without it, people’s health and wellbeing would suffer from not being able to live their way of life and not getting essential nutrients from the rice. (More on the importance of wild rice in UR’s 2017 report, Resistance to Line 3 Pipeline Seeks to Save Sacred Manoomin.)"

[...]

"Activists fear that legislators will use this time to review policies as an opportunity to take back provisions on the wild rice sulfate standard, a law put in place in 1973 limiting the amount of sulfate that mining companies pollute into wild rice waters."

https://unicornriot.ninja/2025/pressure-builds-to-protect-manoomin-wild-rice/

#Line3 #Line3Resistance #WaterIsLife #TraditionalFoods #TraditionalFarming #Sustenance #Mining #Pipelines #IndigenousPeoplesDay #IndigenousFood