Manoomin (Wild Rice)

Mni wičoni is Lakota for “water is life.” In many Indigenous cultures, women have a strong connection to water and the natural world because both have the ability to create life.

Native American women have been leading efforts to protect the environment --the land, water, elements of their culture, and life-- from the oil industry for years. Since 2015, they’ve organized with Water Protector allies against the Line 3 oil pipeline in Minnesota. By design, the rerouted pipeline runs across 330 miles of land, water, and treaty lands. An oil spill from the pipeline would harm animals, tribal lands, waterways, and plants.

The Manoomin (Ojibwe for wild rice) in this photo was grown in some of those Northern Minnesota waterways by Red Lake Nation Foods. The grain is the basis for the Ojibwe migration story, when thousands of years ago the community walked from the East Coast to the Great Lakes until they found a place where food grew on the water. That food was Manoomin.

Manoomin is the only grain native to North America and tribes in this region have tended and harvested it for centuries. Manoomin is part of the traditional diet, but it’s also an essential part of cultural and spiritual feasts and ceremonies.

Oil pipeline leaks are common – and a leak in this region would have a devastating impact on the waters that support these rice beds, the local economy, the surrounding communities, and Indigenous cultures.

After years of Water Protectors protesting the Line 3 pipeline and being arrested in their fight, construction of the oil pipeline was completed in October 2021. Since then, tar-sands oil has been from Canada. 

As winter transitions to spring, as plants push through the soil to the sun, as buds burst open on trees, as eggs hatch and as infant animals take their first breaths, we celebrate and revere life and Mother Earth.

Keep reading to learn about plants native to the Delmarva region like Tehim (Strawberry) and Gwen'den'en niyo'enno'den' (Red Osier Dogwood).