The History and Story of Wild Rice
(Page 3 of 4)
January/February 2002
By Janet Cass
Manoominike: Making Wild Rice
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It is the wild rice moon, Manoominigiizis, in the north country, and the lakes teem with a harvest. “Ever since I was bitty, I’ve been ricing,” reminisces Spud Fineday of Ice Cracking Lake. This year, Spud, with his wife, Tater (a.k.a. Vanessa Fineday), started ricing at Cabin Point and then moved to Big Flat Lake; both lakes are within the borders of the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge. “Sometimes we can knock four to five hundred pounds a day,” he says, explaining that he alternates the jobs of “poling and knocking” with his wife.
The Finedays, like many other Anishinaabeg Ojibwe from White Earth (and other reservations in the region), continue to rice in order to feed their families, to buy school clothes and fix cars, and to get ready for the ever-returning winter. The wild rice harvest of the Anishinaabeg feeds the soul, continuing a tradition generations old.
Globalocal Rice
Although new varieties of wild rice have been under study by the University of Minnesota since the 1950s, industrialized “wild” rice did not take off until the late 1960s and early 1970s. Minnesota’s paddy wild rice production became aggressive in 1968 (about 20 percent of the market). Minnesota’s 1973 yield was some four million pounds. The increase in production attracted large corporations, began to skew the perceptions of what was “wild” about “wild rice,” and altered the market by representing paddy wild rice as hand-harvested lake-grown.
By the early 1980s, cultivated “wild rice” outstripped indigenous varieties. Ironically, with an it-can-grow-anywhere variety now available, Minnesota lost its monopoly to California. By 1986, 95 percent of the “wild” rice harvested was paddy grown, most of it in northern California. Flooding the market drove down prices. Minnesotan lakeside prices crashed, devastating the Native wild rice economy. Wild rice had leapt from local to national to global economics, and to a concern for consumers who had no idea which wild rice still bore the taste of our lakes and muds.
As Long As There Is Wild Rice, There Will Be Ricers
A pickup pulls up at the rice mill, and Eugene Davis and Tony Warren bring in around 300 pounds of rice off South Chippewa Lake. They are tired, wet from the recurring rain of morning, but happy. “I like it when it rains out there,” nineteen year-old Eugene tells me. “It’s nice; you can’t hear anything but the rain.” It is that peace that brings the ricers back. It is also the memories. I ask Eugene what he thinks about the fact that probably five or ten generations of his family have been on that same lake. “It makes me feel good,” he responds, and smiles.