Historic Fort Wayne to host Indigenous wild rice camp

 Preserving culture, reconnecting and ricing is a very good thing... TLH

  by Jena Brooker September 19, 2024

Rosebud Bear Schneider and her son, Sonny, use a push pole to harvest rice. Credit: Antonio Cosme

Along the shores of the Detroit River and in almost every Michigan waterway,  manoomin, or wild rice, used to grow abundantly. 

Sacred and central to Great Lakes tribes’ origin stories, manoomin has largely disappeared due to development, pollution and other factors. But Indigenous people remain and they are bringing wild rice traditions back to Detroit. 

On Sunday, Historic Fort Wayne is hosting a rice camp where participants will craft wooden sticks for wild rice harvesting, “dance” on the rice in moccasins to remove the hulls and share a meal, among other activities. 

Rosebud Bear Schneider, a Southwest Detroit native and member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, has been working for 10 years on cultivating Indigenous food sovereignty in Detroit. In the past, she would cook and serve wild rice at events to reconnect people to their traditional ways. 

“You would see a full room of people light up and get really excited, like, ‘I haven’t eaten that in a long time,’” said Schneider, who is a co-director of education and engagement at local farming nonprofit Keep Growing Detroit.

Teaching people how to process the rice will deepen that connection even further, she said. It’s the first time she can think of that the teaching was offered in Detroit during her lifetime.

“It’s another step to this path that we’re on to connect to this food, connect to our ways, connect to our spirit and connect to the land,” said Schneider, who will process manoomin for the first time this weekend. 

Teachings say Ojibwe people migrating from the East were told to establish where they found food that grew in water. They found wild rice in Lake Superior and made the region home. The rice grew abundantly along the Detroit River and in other parts of the city before 97% of the city’s coastal wetlands were destroyed for development in the late 20th century and 85% of the city’s inland streams were buried. 

The decimation has contributed to a disconnect between local tribes and the sacred grain, according to rice camp organizers.

“Manoomin, the food that grows on the water – it’s the whole reason that we Anishinaabe are even here,” said east side resident Jared Ten Brink, a member of the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi and one of the event’s collaborators. “It’s so important to who we are, but I talked with my own family members, and most of them don’t know anything about it.” 

Manoomin harvest. Credit: Antonio Cosme

The closest place to Detroit where traditional wild rice harvesting occurs is several hours up north, creating a barrier for Detroit Natives to reconnect to their traditions. The wild rice camp hosted by the Detroit Indigenous People’s Alliance, Black to the Land Coalition and the Ecumenical Theological Seminary seeks to close the gap. 

“We want people to be able to experience wild rice here in Detroit,” said Antonio Cosme, co-founder of Black to the Land Coalition, a nonprofit that helps Black and brown people return to the land. Just a few weeks ago Cosme traveled to Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin, to learn traditional manoomin harvest methods. 

Fort Wayne, the induction center for soldiers for every conflict from the Civil War to Vietnam, is the site of Native burial mounds and where members of the Potawatomi tribe once lived. On Sunday, attendees will smell the toasted rice, feel it beneath their feet and see it with their eyes. 

“It’s hard to really understand something if you can’t actually get your hands into it and do it, so this is a great opportunity where we can bring this to people who wouldn’t otherwise necessarily be able to have this experience,” said Ten Brink. 

Regrowing wild rice

At the state level, efforts are being made to regrow wild rice and recognize its importance.

Last year, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation making wild rice the state’s official native grain, the first state to designate a native grain. In November, more than 70 groups from across the state gave input on a draft of the Michigan Tribal-State Manoomin Stewardship Plan, a joint partnership between the Michigan Wild Rice Initiative and U-M Water Center, funded with a $100,000 state grant from 2022.

The plan is still being finalized, said Ten Brink, who worked on it as a PhD student at U-U-M. Reseeding Detroit and Michigan with manoomin is complicated for a number of reasons, he said. 

“You can’t just harvest manoomin seeds from some place and go out and start tossing them,” he said. 

Jared Ten Brink harvesting rice at Tawas Lake in Michigan. Credit: Nigora Erkeava

Specific varieties need to be used for different locations. Reseeding can be made challenging by water current speeds and temperature, pollution, and species like phragmites, which take over an ecosystem and make it hard for native species like wild rice to thrive. It’s even harder in an urban setting like Detroit, where many waterways have been buried, said Ten Brink, including Bloody Run on the city’s east side near where he lives.

“It’s enclosed in a storm drain, it doesn’t exist as a river,” he said.  “Those are places where river rice would have been growing, but we don’t even have the rivers to restore it.” 

Another challenge is figuring out how to work together on the plan, he said.

“Wild rice restoration – a lot of the knowledge is held within the tribes, but a lot of the resources are with the cities, counties, states and the federal government.” 

And, climate change is an increasing threat. In Lac du Flambeau, the rice was struggling, Cosme added.

“You go to a rice bed and you’ll see that it’s a lot of water, there’s not much seed to harvest,” he said. “You start knocking the rice, and it’s not much coming into your boat.” 

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources confirmed in September that the wild rice production this year was significantly lower than average due to a warmer winter and heavy June storms. Factors that are made more likely due to climate change, which Ten Brink hopes to educate people about at Sunday’s rice camp. 

“In Southeast Michigan, we will see more and more severe weather as a result of warmer temperatures and that severe weather has a couple of big impacts for wild rice,” he said, primarily increased water levels and water temperatures. 

For non-Natives interested in the camp and the topic, Schneider wants them to know that Indigenous people still exist in Detroit and need support. 

Since 2018, when the city of Detroit had its first Indigenous Peoples’ Day, on what is alternatively considered Columbus Day, Schneider said the relationship between Indigenous people and the city has been growing, like District 6 representatives supporting the traditional maple sugarbush in Rouge Park. 

“We are still very much a thriving community and we still very much need that solidarity and support when it comes to these huge issues like feeding ourselves, having our neighbors recognize that we are still here and that Indigenous People’s Day is an actual and important day,” she said. 

The Sunday camp runs from 1-6 p.m. Registration is required and urban Natives will be prioritized.

SOURCE: https://www.bridgedetroit.com/historic-fort-wayne-to-host-indigenous-wild-rice-camp/