Wild Rice and Chetek

People from around Wisconsin come to partake in the deeply rewarding experience of gathering this wild food by using Ojibwa harvesting methods that are centuries old. In the end, rice gatherers commune with nature and friends, and if the harvest is good, they also gain a few pounds of wild rice to help them through another Wisconsin winter.

Wild rice is annual aquatic grass. The ricing district stretched from Manitoba, Canada through Minnesota and Wisconsin Lake country. The life cycle of wild rice is fairly simple. The seed drops off of the grass in August or September and sinks quickly into the lake bottom near the mother plant. It will remain dormant in the sediment until spring when warming water and low oxygen conditions stimulate germination; some seed can remain dormant for several years. This extended dormancy helps the plant survive in years of occasional crop failure.

The plant continues to grow into summer with the initial stages underwater. By mid-June, ribbon-like leaves begin floating on top of the water. In July, aerial shoots begin to develop, growing out to heights of 2-8 feet above the water. Flowering starts in late July or early August, with the seeds reaching maturity in 10-14 days. The highest seeds on the stalk reach maturity first.

Ripe seed drops into the lake bottom unless harvested by humans or wildlife. An acre of good rice beds can yield over 500 pounds of seed, but hand harvesting will only capture about 10 to 15 percent of this amount. Because wild rice ripens at a gradual, uneven rate, rice can be harvested repeatedly during the season, which may extend for up to three weeks on a particular lake. Different water bodies will also ripen at slightly different times, so the harvest season may last four to five weeks overall. Ripening is also affected by sediment type, water depth, and other factors.

A typical four-year ricing period will include a bumper year, two fair years, and one year of bust with little rice. Wild rice is important in the ecology of many lakes and streams. Its nutritious seeds have long been a mainstay for waterfowl, and its beds provide breeding waterfowl with roosting and loafing areas, as well as cover for their young.

Unfortunately, some historic rice beds have also been lost due to pollution, large boat wakes, and aquatic invasive species. Especially significant are changes in water levels created by dams that can increase the depth enough to destroy habitat for the rice. The wild rice in the Chetek Chain of Lake was significantly affected when the Knapp, Stout and Co. logging operation constructed the dam that created the chain of lakes as we now know them. The dam raised the level of the lake chain thus destroying the wild rice beds.

Only Wisconsin residents may harvest rice in the state. Persons between the ages of 16 and 65 must purchase a wild rice harvesting license. The wild rice harvest is controlled cooperatively by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wild rice harvest coordinator along with rice chiefs from the respective Chippewa tribes. By treaty the Chippewa tribes have a usury right to hunt, fish and gather within areas designated by treaties agreed to in the 19th century. Barron county is one of twelve Wisconsin counties with regulated wild rice waters.

To protect wild rice beds, no mechanical devices may be used to harvest or gather wild rice. Harvesters are limited to gathering wild rice in boats no loner than seventeen feet and no wider than 38 inches that must be propelled by muscular power using paddles or push poles. Ricers must use smooth, rounded, wooden rods or sticks that are no longer than 38 inches and operated by hand. These sticks, called flails, are used to bend the tall stalks over the canoe. As the seed heads are tapped, some rice falls in the canoe and some in the water to seed the bed for future years.

A ricing trip may yield anywhere from a few pounds of rice to more than 200! Freshly harvested rice (referred to as "green" rice) can be used for sowing, but if your goal is food for the table, then the rice will need to be finished. Finishing wild rice involves reducing the moisture content by drying it out and removing the sheath that covers the see. Traditional finishing is labor intensive and involves parching, "dancing" to loosen the hulls, and winnowing the rice. A hundred pounds of green rice usually yields from 35-60 pounds of finished product.

To the Anishinaabe people (Chippewa or Ojibwa), wild rice continues to be a staple in their diet. Known as manoomin (a term derived from "Manitou," meaning Great Spirit and "meenum," meaning delicacy), this "food that grows on water" is woven deeply into their cultural identity including their migration stories and oral history, dance , and ceremonies. The August, or Rice Making Moon, signals the harvest season, which is a time for celebrations of thanksgiving. Wild rice is a central component to other Native American cultures within the rice region, including the Dakota and Menominee (who took their name from this plant).

Journals of early European explorers also emphasized the importance of wild rice. The voyageurs found the plant growing on the lakes and river ways they traversed, and they used it as a food staple. It in part helped the regional fur trade flourish.

In the Chetek area what is now Prairie Lake was at one time called Prairie Rice Lake due to its large amount of wild rice that made the lake look like a prairie. Wild rice played a significant roll in the Native American influence in this area. Large groups of Natives gathered in the Chetek area for the wild rice harvest and conducted ceremonies of thanksgiving. Wild rice was also a trading and bartering commodity. When gathering in Chetek sometimes the tribes engaged in war battles and experienced death of tribal members. Burials of tribal members led to the significant amount of burial mounds being found in and around the Chetek area.

Excerpted from: Lake Tides, The newsletter for people interested in Wisconsin Lakes, College of Natural Resources, by Patrick Goggin, UWEX Lakes Specialist, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Volume 34, No.3, Summer, 2009. Internet: www.uwsp.edu/cnr/uwexlakes E-mail: uwexlakes@uwsp.edu

Save Wild Rice: Protect natural wild rice from genetic contamination: http://savewildrice.org/
Buy sustainably harvested wild rice online: http://nativeharvest.com/catalog