Wild Rice & Holy, Holy, Holy

 

                                                        Grist Amelia Bates 

I'm often slow to this blog during the past few months because while we're early risers we often take advantage of low winds to get out on the water. From time to time we're in our canoe but far more often it's kayaks. This morning we set out from Pt. Anne, east of Belleville, and paddled to the mouth of the Salmon River near the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. The Bay of Quinte is a large body of water but today it was so calm we ventured well out from shore with no motorboats in sight. Fish were jumping and an osprey dove down to catch one. Blue herons and an egret flew by. 

This was all marvelous, yet the most powerful few moments came as we drifted through a small bed of wild rice. We did so in silence and agreed that the experience was prayerful, holy. We didn't sing the old hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy, but we felt it, and Ruth did launch into the more contemporary Over My Head. 

There have been news stories lately about Indigenous peoples reasserting their sovereignty to establish rice beds in bodies of water across the continent. Some are opposing development, including underwater pipelines, while others point out that human-manipulated waterways including the Trent have taken altered traditional rice beds.  There is a play and a documentary about one of these "unholy" controversies called Cottagers and Indians.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9k42UkDvxc

An article in Grist magazine addresses treaty rights in Minnesota: 

For Bibeau and the Anishinaabe people, the wild rice harvest is at once tradition, sustenance, and cultural lifeway. According to their oral tradition, the Anishinaabe came to settle in the Great Lakes basin thousands of years ago when they followed a sacred shell in the sky to a place where food grew on water. When they arrived, they found wild rice — one of the only grains native to North America. Wild rice in the Anishinaabe language is manoomin: the good berry.

“Wild rice is our life. Where there’s Anishinaabe there’s rice. Where there’s rice there’s Anishinaabe. It’s our most sacred food,” said Anishinaabe activist Winona LaDuke. “It’s who we are.”

These are not easy issued to resolve, yet Indigenous voices must be heard. For today I will give thanks for the experience on the bay and praise the Creator.