3; Lost to the lake; Inland waters

What is more. It's the origin evolved from. The term. Meaning. I'm new. In learning to walk I'm lost to the like. I said in the in the boat the hip hooray sticks and I said he has a long pole that he uses you know to pull the boat down your wake. I said I know when you nibble on my left hand I gather the rice and you need the biggest double this you know switch the rice in back and forth on the other side do the same thing you know just a steady rhythm all the you know in a cliche Estes it is written To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born and a time to die a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

Among the Ojibway men on the seas is the last moon of summer. The Rice making moon is the time for harvesting one of nature's greatest gifts to the people of the upper Great Lakes wild rice. Naomi Ackley and her husband Charles live on mole Lake Indian Reservation in Wisconsin. Each year they harvest their wild rice in the old way. When you can pick all day sometimes you get little blisters on your hands and but you know there's days when you're in the lake you stop the wrist you know so it doesn't get too bad. He push polls a narrow flat bottomed boat through the slender rice stalks at a steady pace. She sits in the back of the boat tapping the ripened seed heads with yard long white cedar sticks. The rice so thick it seems more a matter than a lake when you gather there

right. You gather it. You know without breaking the stocks. Just an archive so is it hard work. Yeah gets tiresome because you can't move around the U.S. aboard one position all day. But he can stand up and look around and he gets star you can set down you know whether you set there and you know in that one no positional thing you can move around too much in the board because. Race goes in led by them Leagues you know. And then if you have to keep your vote over your vote goes over something if you're going you can't get out of the lead. So you've got to be very careful. There is something very elemental about a late autumn day being on a creek or a small lake with rice plants. You cast off on a small boat. It's a boat that can be crafted by any one of the members of the community by hand. You go out among these plants that you've watched growing over the last

four or five months and in the serenity of that that afternoon you can gather enough food to assure yourself that you will not starve in the coming winter. Anthropologist Bob coffee with the full technique of harvesting rice includes not only push pulling your canoe through the rice and tapping the stocks but it's also the timing. You go out towards the latter part of August to harvest the rice and there may be at at Mill Lake for example 30 or 40 boats on one lake on a single day harvesting. They may let the Wrights Rice Lake Rest for a few days as more of the seed matures and then we go out and harvest this newly ripened rice from the same plants. And this may go on for three or four weeks. One of the things while you're racing you're you're lost

you're lost to the lake. You're lost to the rice you're lost to the rhythms that you're creating push polling your way through the sound of the water the sound of tapping the rice the sound of the the rice plants passing along side of your boat. Among the Ojibway the word for wild rice is Min Newman which means good Barry. Actually it's neither Rice nor a berry but a wild aquatic grass seed. It grows most abundantly in northern Wisconsin northeastern Minnesota and southern Ontario where native people have depended on it for over a thousand years. They all finished now and then I says would I survive a winter if they didn't have this attitude for a while. Wild Rice is a delicacy for the non-Indian it's hardly enjoyed in great quantities by the Indian by the Chippewa. During the racing season after some has been

made up and parched people will have it for breakfast with maple sugar on it. They'll have it cooked up just as rice for lunch and then they'll have a cooked venison for supper. They'll eat it three meals a day every day if they can get it. That mole like Naomi and Charles take great pains to process their rice in the traditional manner. First it's dried in the autumn sun then parched in metal tubs over a low fire then danced on to remove the hole and finally fanned in birch bark baskets to winnow the grain clean. It takes two to work together just like we said only I dry their rice and then we set the table for old second when when are it's time to come to the dance again that there's that and then after he gets done with it for me and that's why it's going to help and you know that we work together at it. For years Indians were the principal Rice harvesters. But when the price of finished Rice rose many non-Indians crowded the likes some

taking the rice with rowboats and broomsticks to protect Rice beds many of the traditional Ojibwe methods of harvesting wild rice have since been incorporated into state law. But changes in land and water use have also taken their toll on the rice and its habitat. Bob guff lakes that have in the past produce rice no longer do so for two reasons. First land use practices have very often encouraged damming up these marshland areas because resort owners and second home owners are not interested in having Marsh property at their boundary lines instead they'd rather Lake frontage. The other way of course is by draining the marshes to turn it into farmland. These things really alter the face of northern Wisconsin and today you have out of what you had were six lakes in the 900 thirties. You've got basically one primary lake today. The only reason that's still there is because the Chippewa have seen to it.

My dad always used to say when you plant your race it will take at least seven years for it to germinate in the mud. People can be killers nothing into the lake. Let's make a garden. If you don't have seen. OK. Well it's the same way with rice and rice and everything here and then when we're come in and I take my sticks and I run my sticks this way going backwards knocking it back into the water. The traditional way of harvesting rice only captures 10 percent of the available crop. And some people have said that the other 90 percent is lost. Many of the Indian people laugh and say last to where last as seed for next year's harvest last to the fish loss to the ducks that come by here in the geese that fly through. It all moves in a circle the hand that stirs the rice. The feet that dance it the going forth and the coming back

the planting and the plucking up the giving and the taking. Among the Ojibway the money do we call it The Great Spirit the meaning is more closely the great mystery of creation. In taking the wild rice the Ojibway give thanks. Recognizing their dependence on the environment in which they live. We take our tobacco was always saying that you take tobacco and you put it in the water you thanking the Great Spirit you know that you got a bony thought harvest. And. You find out I said when you go out in the lake with an attitude you know of being thankful I said it and you know it just seems I think it's easier and whispered to me again. You know so that's what we do. Lost to the lake was written narrated and produced by Jean for Rocca

technical director buzz Kemper Studio Max Michael DeMarco script adapted in part from wild rice by Bob Goff inland waters is a production of WHCA Radio in Madison Wisconsin. This series is made possible by a grant from the Wisconsin humanities Committee.