Cultural importance of manoomin – or wild rice – among Michigan’s Native nations at the heart of stewardship plan.

Leah Lemm, a citizen of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, practices her culture in many ways. She’s been slowly learning Ojibwemowin, the Ojibwe language. She helps share Native stories in her work ...

An curved arrow pointing right. Manoomin, meaning "the good berry," is a type of wild rice that has been harvested by the Ojibwe people in the Great Lakes region of North America for centuries.

Tribal leaders inevitably chose land that had the best manoomin. Wild rice also is important to other tribes in Wisconsin.

Some of the grains fall back into the water during the process, thus allowing the manoomin, or wild rice, to reseed itself. The annual manoomin harvest goes from late August until mid to late ...

Boozhoo. I’m Leah Lemm, citizen of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. I’m the senior editor of the Native News initiative at MPR News. I’m excited to share our new film, “Finding Manoomin: A ...

Can you talk a little bit about your personal relationship to wild rice? LEANNA GOOSE: Yeah, I can. So growing up, I harvested manoomin with my parents. And those rice beds that I remember as a ...

“We lost a huge amount of rice that was here,” said Barb Barton, the author of “Manoomin: The Story of Wild Rice in Michigan” and a recently retired endangered species biologist for the state. “The ...

Michigan’s wild rice, or manoomin stewardship plan was discussed in depth on Jan. 24 during an environmental conference hosted by Ann Arbor-based nonprofit The Stewardship Network. Both ...