Wild rice camp in Mount Pleasant shares Indigenous ecological knowledge

MOUNT PLEASANT, MI – The process of changing manoomin from a medicine to a food happens at rice camp.

Indigenous experts shared their traditional ecological knowledge during a recent wild rice camp at the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe’s cultural center in Mount Pleasant. Over three days from Sept. 26-28, dozens of participants learned the traditional steps to remove water from foraged wild rice, so it becomes a shelf-stable food.

Native rice camps are where people have traditionally gathered for that labor-intensive processing, said wild rice expert Roger LaBine, a tribal elder from Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

“My ancestors, what we always attempted to do, and usually completed, was that everybody in the community had enough,” LaBine said.

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