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[SANET-MG] protecting sacred resources



 Posted on Sun, Jan. 15, 2006
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/editorial/13621879.htm
Pioneer Press Twin Cities

Protecting a sacred resource
ART COULSON

To the Anishinabe of Minnesota and Wisconsin, the plant is called manoomin or mahnomen. We know it in English as wild rice, though that black grain we buy at the grocery store often isn't. Wild, that is.

Much of the "wild" rice sold in local stores is commercially grown in rice paddies, mostly in northern California. Unfortunately, Minnesota's official state grain and a major source of income for Minnesota's native people has little to protect it from commercial interests that would trade on the good name of one of our state's natural treasures.

A state labeling law — which grew out of a lawsuit in the 1980s — requires that any wild rice sold as such in Minnesota must contain at least 51 percent naturally grown wild rice. That still means up to 49 percent of your wild rice could be paddy-grown. And nothing stands in the way of commercial producers who oxymoronically label their 100 percent paddy-grown rice as "cultivated wild rice" and use Indian names and imagery to mislead shoppers.

"We can't compete with the combines," said Winona LaDuke, founding director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project. "The paddy rice pretty much trashed our (reservation) economies. The people on the reservations relied on the rice for income. We have a huge wild rice resource but we can't compete."

Among the factors that tilt the competitive playing field in favor of large commercial ricing interests are state and federal water subsidies in California and research at public universities, including the University of Minnesota, that leads to the development of new strains of rice that benefit large commercial farmers, but could harm native wild rice crops.

It's that research into rice genetics that most frightens Ojibwe ricers. They fear that genetically modified rice could infect their manoomin — a gift to them from the Creator — and forever end its bounty.

Their fears are hardly irrational or misplaced.

Some field tests of genetically modified crops in the U.S. and Canada have resulted in miles-long "drift" of modified pollen, leading to fears that cross-pollination with non-modified crops is inevitable.

And a scathing report from the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture last month charged that the department failed to properly monitor experimental biotech crops.

According to an Associated Press report on the findings, the USDA didn't thoroughly evaluate biotech applications nor did it ensure that experimental crops were destroyed at the end of field tests. In some cases, the USDA didn't even know where the modified crops were planted.

"The system has been set up practically as a self-reporting system," Greg Jaffe, biotech director for the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, told the AP. "It's a 'don't look, don't find' policy."

Instead of plowing public money into research that almost certainly will harm or destroy a native resource, why not channel the money into programs that will help Ojibwe ricers become economically self-sufficient? Native wild rice processors could benefit from recapitalization and expansion of their medium-size facilities, LaDuke said. And ricers and processors could use help with marketing their superior product.

"Branding and marketing," LaDuke said. "What distinguishes us? Quality over quantity."

That brings us back to the labeling issue. LaDuke's cousin, St. Paul businessman Al Paulson, has been pushing for a federal wild rice labeling law for years.

"We have (Sens. Mark) Dayton and (Norm) Coleman on the Agriculture Committee," he said. "We're trying to get them to pass a law. Native wild rice is a name worth protecting, just like Champagne and Bordeaux."

To Indian people, manoomin is even more important than that. Wild rice was a gift to The People from the Creator, fulfillment of a prophesy that led the Anishinabe on their westward migration to Wisconsin and Minnesota.

As LaDuke says, "Don't mess it up."

Coulson is editorial page editor of the Pioneer Press, 345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN 55101.

Useful links

White Earth Land Recovery Project: www.savewildrice.org

Native Harvest: www.nativeharvest.com/index1.asp

Minnesota Public Radio wild rice project: news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/03/08_robertsont_wildrice

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