Protecting A Sacred Resource: Wild Rice Restoration Efforts Take Root in Michigan
Grains of wild rice. Photo provided by Roger LaBine.
In natural expanses of shallow water throughout the Great Lakes region grows a sacred plant at risk from climate change, fluctuating water levels, pollution, and urban development. Wild rice, known as mnomen or manoomin in the language of the Anishinaabe, might look unassuming to the untrained eye, but this semi-aquatic grass has inspired generations of stories—and ensured generations of survival—for the Anishinaabe.
“Our ancestors used to have enough maple sugar and wild rice that they could stay hunkered down in their wigwams in the harsh weather when they couldn’t go out,” explains wild rice conservationist Roger LaBine, a member of the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. “It sustained us and enabled us to be here today.”
Volunteers spread wild rice on a tarp to dry. Photo provided by Roger LaBine.
According to Anishinaabe stories, wild rice is one of the plants that inspired settlement in the Great Lakes Basin more than 600 years ago after the Anishinaabe migrated from the mouth of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The land was known as “the place where food grows on the water,” explains LaBine.
“The Great Lakes Basin is the biggest freshwater source on Mother Earth,” adds LaBine, who serves as the water resource technician for the Band’s environmental department in Watersmeet, Michigan. “The only place that wild rice grows natively is in the Great Lakes Basin … So, our teachings tell us that if you see manoomin growing in water anywhere, that water quality is good.”
Because wild rice grows in water, pollution and contaminants have a significant impact on the survival of this ancient grain. In the last century, wild rice has declined by more than 30% in its natural habitat. When LaBine first encountered wild rice more than 50 years ago, concerns were already rising among Indigenous people about the health and survival of manoomin.
Drying wild rice. Photo provided by Roger LaBine.
“I was introduced to wild rice in 1972,” recalls LaBine. “I was invited by my grandparents and my mentor and uncle, and we actually had to travel into northern Wisconsin because the rice on our traditional home, where our traditional reservation is, was being destroyed by a dam that was installed by a power company.”
The dam was flooding out the rice beds on Lac Vieux Desert, and LaBine became active in more than 20 years of successful litigation across multiple courts to restore the original water level of the lake. Afterward, the presence of wild rice beds continued to increase on Lac Vieux Desert until 2012.
“In 2013, we started to notice that there was a decline,” says LaBine. “My goal is to try to identify what habitat changes and what impact on that habitat are most likely to cause decline of the rice beds.”
To that end, LaBine and fellow conservationists received funding from the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor water quality in the area. Concurrently, LaBine worked with the Army Corps of Engineers for the last five years to help research the impact of climate change on wild rice beds as well as factors like high levels of mercury in water, the presence of toxic per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and the impact of chemical treatments for crops on the local watershed.
LaBine (far right) gives a canoe safety demonstration before taking ricers out on the water. Photo provided by Roger LaBine.
As another point of pride, LaBine is a founder of the Michigan Wild Rice Initiative which has received $100,000 in funding from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy to develop a wild rice stewardship plan. Members of all 12 federally recognized Tribes in Michigan, government agencies, and researchers from the University of Michigan are working together to create the plan.
“That stewardship plan is eventually going to propose some regulations for the general public—nontribal people—who have an interest and a desire to harvest wild rice,” LaBine explains. “Right now, anybody can harvest wild rice if you find it, and there is no particular guidance on how you can harvest it and do it properly without damaging the rice bed itself.”
The plan will also focus on including information about wild rice in secondary education curriculums. “One of the other things we need to do something about is trying to make the educational systems aware of this—as well as the legislators, as well as the agencies and their staff—because when we do a holistic approach, it’s going to be a lot easier,” LaBine says.
LaBine acknowledges that other states—particularly Wisconsin and Minnesota—have imposed greater protections for wild rice than Michigan. He hopes that with guidance from Tribal communities and wild rice researchers, Michigan will begin to catch up.
“If we can educate everybody to have a goal to try to reinstate, try to revive, try to restore this resource in the state of Michigan, it would be nice to get this back to its original status and make sure it’s plentiful enough that everybody can benefit from it,” he says.
