EAST LANSING, MI – There’s a new plan to help restore and protect Michigan’s remaining native wild rice beds.

Michigan’s wild rice, or manoomin stewardship plan was discussed in depth on Jan. 24 during an environmental conference hosted by Ann Arbor-based nonprofit The Stewardship Network. Both Indigenous and academic experts explained how the plan was a project of the Michigan Wild Rice Initiative during presentations at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

The stewardship plan comes one year after manoomin – or “the good berry” in the Anishinaabemowin language – was officially made Michigan’s state native grain. It’s a symbolic designation like the white pine being the state tree or the Petoskey as the state stone.

Advocates don’t want progress to end there.

“We at the Initiative are hoping that we can leverage this to keep going and this would not just be an honorary thing,” said Roger LaBine, manoomin expert and tribal elder at Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in the western Upper Peninsula.

Manoomin is integral to the Anishinaabe migration story, the history of how the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples came to settle in the Great Lakes region. Those tribes are collectively known as Anishinaabe, and they consider wild rice to be a sacred relative with its own spirit.

Most of the state’s historical wild rice beds were destroyed during European settlement, particularly across the Lower Peninsula. It created “ecological amnesia” through generations of lost knowledge, said Barb Barton, who wrote the book “Manoomin: The Story of Wild Rice in Michigan.”

In more recent years, individual Michigan tribes worked on their own manoomin programs, trying to restore some of what was lost and protect what remains. State natural resources managers also planted wild rice in northern floodings along Lake Superior.

Now collective efforts to bolster wild rice are coalescing under this new stewardship plan – a roadmap to more manoomin across Michigan.

LaBine said it’s important to restore as much wild rice as possible because of its cultural significance to Michigan’s Indigenous tribes.

“If manoomin disappears, the Anishinaabe will disappear,” he said. “The manoomin spirit is returning to these tribal communities.”

Goals of the plan are to increase awareness among all state residents that wild rice exists to reduce it being accidentally destroyed, grow appreciation for its cultural importance, and highlight its role as an ecological indicator of good water quality.

The plan prioritizes a need for shared best practices to protect and restore wild rice. Examples include gathering and processing methods, maximizing harvest access, and encouraging autumn seeding to complete the annual plant species’ lifecycle.

Proponents said there may even be value in establishing legal harvest seasons and a licensing process, like other Great Lakes states which maintain monitored wild rice beds.

“We are going to be looking for legislative action. We have a long way to go to catch up with our sister states, Wisconsin and Minnesota,” LaBine said during a presentation at MSU’s Kellogg Conference Center.

One point underscored in the stewardship plan is that Michigan’s wild rice should not be managed as an agricultural commodity but be treated as a natural, nutritious food source for both people and wildlife. Manoomin plays a key role in the Indigenous food sovereignty movement.

That’s why an unprecedented level of traditional ecological knowledge from among Indigenous Michiganders went into drafting this new statewide manoomin stewardship plan. The document was written to bridge both Indigenous knowledge and Western science but with a forward emphasis on Native perspectives, said Jennifer Read, director at University of Michigan’s Water Center, which helped draft the plan.

It took nearly three years of work after a $100,000 state grant was awarded to the effort in 2022.

“They’ve done a good job of reaching out to traditional ricers and the ricing community within the tribes and talking to tribal members that may not necessarily be represented on the initiative,” said Katie Lambeth, tribal liaison for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.

Wild rice knowledge among environmental specialists and managers within tribal and state governments was made more “well rounded” through the stewardship plan by including input from traditional ricers, she said.

Kathleen Smith said her job with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission is to consult about manoomin with Indigenous tribes across Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. She confirmed the U-M researchers who drafted the plan did more than “check a box” when consulting with tribal experts.

“They did take the time to listen. They came up to sit with Roger and I, and our communities, and they learned from the community members on how to be that voice,” said Smith, a citizen with the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in the U.P.

The manoomin stewardship plan is expected to be posted online for the public to read in coming days, officials said.

Related articles:

Do you know what manoomin is? Michigan’s state native grain.

State to sow seeds of native wild rice plan with Michigan tribes

Wild rice brought the Anishinaabe people to the Great Lakes. Now they are trying to restore it.

Part of tribal identity, Great Lakes wild rice threatened by climate change

Tribal efforts lead to native wild rice as Michigan state symbol

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