Wild Rice and the Ojibway People

by Thomas Vennum

Wild rice has always been essential to life in the Upper Midwest and neighboring Canada. In this far-reaching book, Thomas Vennum, Jr., uses travelers' narratives, historical and ethnological accounts, scientific data, historical and contemporary photographs and sketches, his own field work, and the words of Indian people to examine the importance of this wild food to the Ojibway people. He details the technology of harvesting and processing, from seventeenth-century reports though modern mechanization. He explains the important place of wild rice in Ojibway ceremony and legend and depicts the rich social life of the traditional rice camps. And he reviews the volatile issues of treaty rights and litigations involving Indian problems in maintaining this traditional resource.

A staple of the Ojibway diet and economy for centuries, wild rice has now become a gourmet food. With twentieth-century agricultural technology and paddy cultivation, white growers have virtually removed this important source of income from Indain hands. Nevertheless, the Ojibway continue to harvest and process rice each year. It remains a vital part of their social, cultural, and religious life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology

357 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 1988

Reviews

[Allison6876]

read for HIST 3417 paper

[Moris]

If science is an impersonal discipline, then genomic research must continue in spite of the vociferous protestation staged by the native tribes in defense of what they believe is their cultural identity. Moreover, the benefits of a stronger and better yield of rice in both varieties can mutually be reaped by both the natives and other consumers. There is a vast economic opportunity to be tapped in this regard, and science must play a role in precipitating this impetus. It is perhaps key to solving a number of economic questions, including poverty and job creations. Assuming that this is true, it would be selfish to prevent science from gaining access to this solution.

Meanwhile, the native tribe’s perspective offers an interesting dimension to the idea of food safety, cultural preservation, and resistance against what is deemed a vestige of colonial paternalism, among others. The omnipresence of wild rice in all of the tribe’s cultural artifacts in addition to its being exalted to a special position in a treaty with the US government further consolidates this position against perverting wild rice in the name of science and what is understood as progress.

That said, it behooves us to extend the greatest of protection accordable to wild rice as it represents a connection with mother earth, to which the tribe as a whole owes their livelihood and health. Should this fail, the tribe would have lost an immense sense of identity and cultural belonging to the earth which has for centuries sustained their living, so even if the new rice would be better in economic terms, it would be a different rice that does not resonate with the tribe’s spiritual and cultural longing.