Wild Rice Eco-Cultural Restoration and Revitalization

In the Great Lakes, wild ricing was a seasonal subsistence activity of many communities and cultures in both ancient pre-contact and post-contact periods. Many ecological and cultural factors will be discussed as to why both wild rice and its harvesting and processing into a storable surplus food declined over the last century. The author will detail his personal ethnobotanical quest to give back to the cultures he learned from in the last century to establish the Native Wild Rice Coalition this century, dedicated to sustain, restore, and protect native wild rice communities in the Great Lakes Region and promote understanding of the cultural and natural values of wild rice. Growing the number of wild rice harvesters, harvest opportunities, and people transforming a natural resource into a cultural and economic one has been an eco-cultural success story. A transferable model of a locally-relevant, ethnobiological project or movement will be described that will engage both indigenous and immigrant (non-native) human populations in transforming the world into a better place for future generations.