Connection to Anishinaabeg 

The Anishinaabeg people have lived in relationship with this plant for a millennia. 

First Nation peoples have been using the grain from all over parts of North America for food for thousands of years. Either locally where it is harvested or through vast trade routes.

Manoomin is boiled quickly when green or takes longer when fully ripe and prepared, is a side dish or stuffing, used often in stews, pounded into flour for use similar to bread, and popped like popcorn. 

Through archeological records the Rice Lake area has been inhabited first by Paleo or Stone Age Indigenous Peoples for 10,800 years.

John Mc Andrews from the Department of Botany of the Royal Ontario Museum found that wild rice was well established in the area of Serpent Mounds 3,500 year before present.

Manoomin was eaten much at harvest but also stored and available for use throughout the year. It was a staple for Indigenous people in Manoomin areas, traded to other Indigenous nations, traded for various goods during the fur trade, and sold for money.  When there was not enough for trade or sale, manoomin was kept within communities as a staple and subsistence food. This was used particularly in times of harvesting or hunting scarcity , to provide food when trapping for furs of animals with little meat value (e.g. lynx, fox, and otter), and to to recover from warfare. The Anishinaabeg were willing to fight to get and retain access to Manoomin beds, such as between the Ojibway and Dakota in what is now Wisconsin and Minnesota. 

The ethnohistoric documentation suggests that the Ojibway evaluated the subsistence use of cereal products as being more important than commercial trade in these products. –Tim E. Holzkamm, “Subsistence Factors in the Spread of Ojibway Horticulture in the Upper Mississippi and Boundary Waters Region During the 19th Century”, 1985, cited in Vennum, 1988, p. 42