WAYLAND, MI — We don’t really agree on much anymore, but there is still one universal truth— people connect to their community and culture through food.
“It's blood memory from thousands of years ago,” said Wyatt Szpliet, Food Sovereignty Coordinator Gun Lake Tribe.
And thanks to the hard work of many, it's a memory that is still going strong today.
In 2023 Manoomin (Zizania plaustris and Zizania aquatic) became our state’s official native grain.
A deserving title because it’s been a foundation of Great Lakes regional diet for as long as people have been eating food, and an important piece of wetlands here in Michigan and the Great Lakes region.
“Manoomin is incredibly important, important to our people," Wyatt told FOX17. "It's one of our survival foods. It's actually the reason why the Anishinabek ended up in the Great Lakes region”
Found growing in shallow inland lakes and slow-moving streams across the state, Wyatt and the Gun Lake Tribe workevery year to plant, harvest, and teach classes about Manoomin in the Kalamazoo River system.
“Knowing what that food is," added Wyatt. "From the time it's a seed, what it looks like when it's growing, and then finally, when it's blooming, it's like that connection is so important to our people, and we need to revitalize that as well within ourselves, for our own blood memories.”
A connection that’s not easy to keep.
“So we do some monitoring throughout the year," said Gun Lake Tribe Water Resource Specialist Alex Wieten. "We try to visit our beds every couple of weeks to see how those populations are doing. There's a lot of things that can affect the rice from year to year. The heat and humidity can cause things like fungal disease to go up and down. There's a number of aquatic invasive species, such as Phragmites or European frog-bit that can have really big effect on populations from year to year. Hydrologic changes, if we get a really big flood in the springtime, can uproot plants”
It's a big task for sure.
“Manoomin kind of goes on a six or seven-year boom or bust cycle," added Alex. "So we'll see these really good banner years, and we'll also see years where there's not much rice at all in some of these populations.”
That’s why Wyatt, Alex, and The Gun Lake Tribe cast a wide net, working with other tribes to keep the state’s official grain on the landscape.
“Sometimes we need to get to other communities, and sometimes we have to go to other communities to find knowledge," said Wyatt. "And so it's just one of those things that you know, as we grow and learn, we learn that we need each other, we can't. No one can do it alone. Manoomin is one of those things. It does take a tribe.”
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