Will the Real Wild Rice Please Stand Up?

—by Emma Onawa

It’s Manoominike-Giizis, the wild rice moon, and hundreds of Anishinaabeg gather at lakes on the White Earth Indian Reservation for the annual wild rice harvest. It’s an intergenerational family, community, and cultural way of life that’s generations old and central to Anishinaabeg life. The harvest is done traditionally, using canoes, push poles, and wooden sticks to knock rice into the canoes. Ricers can knock as many as four to five hundred pounds of rice in a day. Many Anishinaabeg rice their entire lives.

Manoomin, or wild rice, is sacred to the Anishinaabeg, both as a food and a tradition. It’s a gift from the Creator that the Anishinaabeg are charged to protect. In early Anishinaabeg history the ancestors were told to find a food that grows upon the water, which then would end the people’s migration to the west, and ultimately led the Anishinaabeg to northern Minnesota. To the Anishinaabeg, wild rice is a food uniquely theirs, used daily as food and in ceremonies and thanksgiving feasts.

Wild rice and biodiversity

Minnesota is a center of biodiversity for wild rice. There are over 60,000 acres of natural wild rice in northern Minnesota lakes and rivers. Wild rice actually is a grass that grows naturally in northern Minnesota and other areas of the Great Lakes region. It’s not planted or cultivated. Natural wild rice varies in color and size because of its natural biodiversity. In 1977, the State of Minnesota designated wild rice as its official state grain.

The unique nature of wild rice initially gave it a niche market and provided a source of income for the Anishinaabeg. Over the last 30 years, however, cultivated or paddy wild rice production has become a profitmaking enterprise for other parties.

Paddy rice production

When wild rice was designated as Minnesota’s state grain, funds were made available that directed attention to wild rice. The University of Minnesota began to develop its own domesticated version of a crossbred wild rice. Minnesota paddy rice production yielded approximately four million pounds by 1973, produced from roughly 25,000 million acres of paddies.

Cultivated paddy rice is planted and grown in artificially made paddies and harvested by machine. To drive production and meet increasing demand, corporations such as Uncle Ben’s and Green Giant became interested. By 1983, cultivated wild rice production outstripped traditional production. California’s production soon took over and by 1986, 95% of wild rice production was paddy grown, most produced in northern California. Today, only 15% of Minnesota’s seven-million-pound wild rice crop comes from traditionally harvested lake and river rice.

To add insult to injury, in addition to the loss of market share, paddy rice companies were selling their rice as “wild rice,” some using Anishinaabeg images in their marketing. The Anishinaabeg filed a lawsuit, resulting in a settlement and a law that requires Minnesota paddy producers (who process large amounts of California paddy rice) to label their rice as paddy rice.

GMO wild rice

The latest and perhaps greatest threat to traditional native wild rice, however, is genetic modification. A California company, NORCAL, holds two breeding patents for wild rice, one of which allows for easier commercial production. Australian researchers have applied for a patent to cross white and wild rice. Our own University of Minnesota, however, has prompted the greatest worries among the Anishinaabeg. Plant geneticist Ron Phillips and his colleagues have mapped the wild rice genome. Phillips considers his work an important foundation for future genetic and crop improvement and feels the risks to wild rice are quite low.

The Anishinaabeg have serious concerns about Phillips’ work. The interest in genetic modification is motivated primarily by economic interests. Two of the researchers involved in the wild rice genome study come from large seed corporations. The two largest corporations, Monsanto and Dupont, control the vast majority of seed stocks worldwide, with a potential to control a large segment of the quantity, diversity, and quality of the world food supply.

Protecting wild rice

Besides just economic interests, there are humanitarian, environmental, and cultural interests. Of primary Anishinaabeg concern is the potential of genetic contamination of native species. Minnesota native wild rice is one the most genetically diverse species in the world. Just a small genetic change could have an unknown impact on the genetic integrity of native rice. Even scientists at the University of Minnesota admit that Native nations have reason for concern. And, the Anishinaabeg rice crop already is threatened by water levels, invasive plant species, pollution and agricultural runoff, boat traffic, and the increasing presence of beavers.

The Anishinaabeg assert treaty rights that protect native wild rice. In 2006, Rep. Frank Moe, (DFL–Bemidji), introduced legislation that would impose a two-year moratorium on field research once someone applies for a test plot within the US to grow a modified variety. Prospects for the bill were not positive at that time and Representative Moe has worked on other alternatives.

In May 2007 the Minnesota Legislature amended existing law to require an environmental impact statement prior to an application for a test plot. The statement must identify existing or potential threats to native wild rice, including recommendations to protect native wild rice.

Representative Moe’s efforts are supported by the Minnesota Chippewa tribes, the White Earth Land Recovery Project, the Wild Rice Campaign, the Indigenous Seed Sovereignty Coalition, the Minnesota DNR, and various state agencies, legislators, and tribal representatives. For now, some protections for native wild rice are available. Constant vigilance is required to continue to protect the natural integrity of not just wild rice, but all species on Mother Earth.

In the U.S., the inventory of crop varieties available today consists of only 5%–20% of those available in the 1904 inventory. China has lost 90% of its wheat varieties since WWII. The extinction rate of plants worldwide is 1000 species per year, the highest of which is occurring in the U.S.

Sources and resources:

• Save Wild Rice
• Native Harvest/ White Earth Land Recovery Project
• "Manoominikewin Abajichiganan (Rice Making Tools)," Noori, Meg, and Dale Kakkak, The Circle: News from a Native American Perspective, September 2006, pp. 1, 10.
• Note: Hampden Park Co-op carries native wild rice handharvested by Roger Pietron and family. You can also order it on line at the Native Harvest web site.

[Emma Onawa is a long time co-op shopper who loves cats — all cats.]