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How
Wild Rice Has Sustained The Ojibwe People
Wild rice is a food of great historical, spiritual, and cultural
importance for the
Ojibwe people. After colonization disrupted their traditional food
system, 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 Madeline Island
(Moningwanakauning).
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American
Indian Women
Question
What were women treated like in the tribes of the Indians? Were they
given more rights than American women of the time?
Answer
In 1644, the Rev. John Megalopensis, minister at a Dutch Church in New
Netherlands, complained that Native American women were “obliged
to prepare the Land, to mow, to plant, and do every Thing; the Men do
nothing except hunting, fishing, and going to War against their Enemies.
. .” Many of his fellow Europeans described American Indian women
as “slaves” to the men, because of the perceived differences
in their labor, compared to European women. Indian women performed what
Europeans considered to be men’s work. But, from the Native American
perspective, women’s roles reflected their own cultural emphases
on reciprocity, balance, and autonomy. Most scholars agree that Native
American women at the time of contact with Europeans had more authority
and autonomy than did European women. It is hard to make any generalizations
about indigenous societies, because North America’s First Peoples
consisted of hundreds of separate cultures, each with their own belief
systems, social structures, and cultural and political practices. Evidence
is particularly scarce about women’s everyday lives and responsibilities.
However, most cultures shared certain characteristics that promoted gender
equality.
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