The Good Life Transcript
- [Narrator] Mino-Bimadiziwin: The Good Life.
- All ready?
- Yeah.
- Never look at an airplane when you're getting in the boat. Tip right over.
- You might be about to.
- [Speaker] If there was one thing that you could-- one analogy that you could use for Anishinaabe, similar to what other people are called, you know some people are called the Salmon People or the Cedar People or whatever, we would be the Rice People because that's our whole culture, our whole survival is couched in that wild rice.
- Oh, I'll just put it right in here.
- [Dorothy] Anything you take, just put the tobacco out. I do it all the time. Thanking the Great Spirit, you know?
- [Speaker] Manoomin is sacred. It's life. You know, it's probably one of the greatest gifts that the creator gave us.
- [Dorothy] I've been ricing with Darwin, what, well, a good 40 years now. there a lot of married people don't go out 'cause they can't get along enough. They fight, knock each other out the boat or something. I don't know . I think Darwin and I are about the oldest couple out there this year, or been for a few years, I think. Most of the time, I think I just like being out on the lake. Years ago, they made money to buy school clothes and like that. But now I don't, so I just more or less enjoy it, going out there now. Lot of fun ricing out. Too lot of fun.
- [Speaker] A reservation is a good land. It is lakes and woods and prairies and farmland and marshes. They call it the medicine chest of the Ojibwes. We selected this reservation, our ancestors did, because it is such good land.
- [Narrator] The Warrior Earth was established for the exclusive purpose of moving all the tribal people, the native people, to one geographical location. That was to take all the people from Red Lake, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Net Lake, and bring them all here. Of course it failed because the people didn't wanna move, refused to move. A lot of people ran away and went back to their own homelands.
- [Gladys] White Earth was kind of set up as a reservation, trying to change these people. But they gave them land allotments, and my grandfather's allotment was at White Earth. This newer grave is my mother's spirit house. That's how the Ojibwe people did it. No, that was my grandma's grave there. My grandpa's here. See, his was all gone. I one time asked my father whether I should reconstruct these that were rotted and he said no, that they didn't reconstruct them. That they're supposed to be allowed to decay and go back into the earth. And that was a swimming pool. And a lot of other children would come here and swim. This was a swimming pool for this area. But they'd bring a car full of their children and they'd bring a picnic lunch maybe and go swimming here. I was raised pretty much by a traditional people. My grandparents were very traditional. They followed all the Ojibwe ways, their way of life, their language, their traditions, the gathering, berrying, fishing. Wild rice harvesting time was a real fun time, an exciting time of the year 'cause they had done preparations throughout the summer. We made our baskets and it was kind of winding up the whole harvesting season, from the whole year all the way from spring through summer, the whole growing season. And THEY kind of wrapped it up in the fall as the rice was kind of the last thing to be gathered and it kind of completed a cycle before you went into the difficult season of winter. This is about where we did a lot of the rice finishing was right probably about in there. It was a big black kettle like this that they parched the race in. And the women's job was parching the rice. They had to have the fire just so, so that they didn't burn the rice. And then it was the men's turn, and then they put the wooden thing, kind of like a barrel, like a barrel, but it was shaped kind of like this. But they put that in the ground, and they'd have new moccasins that were made especially for the wild ricing. And they'd dance on it. And jig the rice out. And my dad, he always used to do it all the way, sing and everything while they were jigging the rice. Then after they were done parching and done jigging it, then it was passed back to the women again to winnow it in the winnowing baskets. Their first batch of rice that they finished, then they'd have a feast with that and kind of a thank you ceremony for the wild rice harvest. So it was kind of a good time for all of them to celebrate their harvest, their sacred harvest. And they did consider the wild rice as sacred, that it was a gift of the creator to the Ojibwe people. At one time when I was, oh, maybe about eight, nine years old, then my father got this job to be the caretaker at Rice Lake there. He was a hunter trapper and a person that lived in with nature all his life. And I think he was selected for that job because of his knowledge of the rice. And he just kind of looked after the rice.
- [Speaker] The elders, I like going to them and asking them to check the lakes. Like we've asked Darwin Stevens up in lower Rice lake to keep an eye on that lake for us. Because Darwin has the age and the wisdom and the knowledge to know.
- I can see that rice from here.
- [Dorothy] Where's the rice, Darwin?
- You can see it over there. That light green. Light green, you can see it. That's rice. Looks good. And it looks good over there.
- Now Big Rice Lake is where I'm gonna mainly be talking about this afternoon. And that's a long lake, it's about four miles long. It lays roughly north and south. And it's about a mile to 3/4 of a mile wide.
- When it's loaded, it's 2000 acres. 2200 acres. That big, has to be the size of a lake. 'Cause it's plum full, that's how much rice you would have. You get out there and you can't, well the rice is not that tall right now, but sometimes some years it's over your head, oh, about six, seven feet. And you get out there, you get lost, you don't know where, which direction you're going. And some people stay out there all night lost.
- [Speaker] Lower Rice Lake has a group of men there, men and women who were born there who utilize the lake and its resources in every aspect.
- And it should have my grandma's name over there .
- [Speaker] Fish, rice, duck hunting, geese hunting. They utilize that. There's a village there, two villages there. And this is their main resource. And it always has been.
- So many of them, I don't even know which branch to pick them off. These are really nice berries. They're just nice and big. They ain't scrawny. I wonder about how much we need. We don't need too many, huh? Too much. I want to save some for the birds. Maybe we'll become famous with our wine berry jelly.
- [Speaker] Our land has provided for us for all these generations. That is why this land is so important to us.
- [Dorothy] I hope it turns out to be jelly. If not, I hope it turns out to be edible.
- We are viewed as being unemployed, having 60 to 70% unemployment on the reservation, low income, and have a host of socioeconomic problems associated with chronic poverty. However, there is an economy which exists on White Earth that continues to exist as it has for hundreds of years that is not documented. That is what we call the traditional economy. That economy consists of harvesting off our land.
- Papa?
- Yeah?
- [Child] Daddy.
- You need to get back, you get back now. I might get paint on you. Splash paint on you.
- An informal exchange that exists between families as it has for a very long time. If you look at studies on this reservation by natural resource departments, you find that 75% of our people hunt, about half harvest wild rice. About the same portion harvest materials from the woods, trap, hunt small game animals, take more than 25 fish a year. Those are indicators of a larger traditional economy that continues to exist on our reservation, but is not documented and is not considered as valid in kind of the broader economic sense when they're looking at wage jobs or when they're looking at bringing employment to the reservation or when they're looking at clear cutting forests or damming lakes, they're not considering the wealth that this traditional economy brings to our communities, which both feeds our families and is also how we reaffirm who we are.
- No good?
- No good.
- No good, huh?
- No good. Sitting gone from the wind.
- [Darwin] Yeah, windy other day.
- That other land is pretty thin out here.
- Yeah, there's a little bit of rice, there. You want that rice?
- It'll come.
- Yeah. How long did it take you to make your boat?
- See, your old paint ain't even dry.
- Oh yeah?
- And there are landings on this lake named after the people who would visit and camp there. When it came time to harvest rice, the whole family would move out to the lake, and sometimes they'd spend the whole month out there and they'd live in little birch bark huts.
- [Darwin] Them days, in the old days, they'd make a camp, a rice camp like around Rice Lake there. They'd move next to the lake.
- [Speaker] And I remember all the camps were there. I was just a kid then, but I remember.
- [Darwin] They had open fires outside for cooking, kettles hanging on the poles.
- [Speaker] At night, some would be parching rice, some would be playing Moccasin Games, powwow. Used to be nice, I remember them days. You don't see that now. You'll never see it anymore.
- First of all, they would just delight me to no end if everybody went back to processing rice the old way, doing their own as a family or as a community. Right out on the lake, right out on the landing. Is it kind of warm out on the lake today?
- It was getting upwards.
- What are you guys doing with. This operation here is a spinoff of a big change that started happening to our people back in the 1920s and 1930s on through, even today, things change rapidly for us. Well, with the commercialization and the industrialization of a lot of this area of the upper Great Lakes, technology began having its effect and, two or three or four people could parch thousands of pounds of rice in a day rather than maybe 20 or 30 pounds at a time in the kettle. 52%. That's not too damn bad a rice for Rice lake. Basically we take the rice in, people bring us their green rice from the lake. 51, 20, 40, 60, 80, five, six. And we have parchers we use, a couple of them that hold approximately 300 pounds of green rice a piece. And we have a thrasher that knocks the hulls off. And then, a variety of cleaning equipment. Myself and two or three other people, we take care of this place and do the rice for a lot of people.
- [Teacher] Our panel discussion tonight, "Who Are the Real Americans," is a follow up of our solo presentation by Professor Gary Schnabel.
- What I just told you was "hello" from my relatives. I am from Mah Konce on the White Earth reservation. And the reason I start this particular presentation that way is. But yeah, I've been gone off and on for a number of years, and I always found myself getting drawn back here simply because it is home. It's the only place that I really know and I feel really comfortable in. Come on, Tugger. The last time I left here was in 1985. October of '91, I came back. So this is a east west line here.
- South.
- Well, I mean yeah, but it runs east and west. The thing about out west is there's tremendous amounts of money out there 'cause it's such an international area. So many people coming and going. So much money coming and going and changing hands. I mean, alls you gotta do is figure out a way to get your piece of it. And I figured out a way to do that. But it was about choices. I mean, you can't buy happiness, you know? That's what I found out. I had to make some decisions about how I wanted to live my life. Do I wanna live in the mad house, the rush, the pressures of the big city? Here, let me do this. This is a highly scientific.
- Oh, it is, huh? Okay. Let's do the seat real quick and then we can measure it.
- [Bob] Or do I wanna come here and resume a lifestyle, a certain way of living.
- Fixing your bike. Wow.
- Okay. All right, that's as low as everything goes.
- [Speaker] Probably just right.
- [Bob] You don't even know being from here, I didn't want my boys being teenagers on the streets of a big city anywhere in America. I think that that's very dangerous this day and age. So basically what I did was I bought this rice mill. I think this is, this might be my fifth year as the owner. I wasn't really content. And I miss these relatives, these trees. I miss the sound of the wind and the trees, the birds, the wolves, all the different things that I was brought up with here. I have a lot less money, but I'm a lot happier here. So it'll be busy back here for a few minutes.
- [Speaker] But the fact is is that there is more economics off the reservation, a better livelihood than there is on. But those who of us that are proud to be Anishinaabe from White Earth, we wanna stay home. This is our home. So we stay here. It's tough at times, but it balances out again.
- Okay, that's, whoa. Perfect. Right on dry ground.
- [Speaker] Again, it's hard. It's good times.
- Well, I took my tobacco out, but I didn't make enough rice. Pocket full of sugar for Darwin's coffee. And we didn't even have coffee.
- [Gladys] So then Indian people start going out, gathering rice to make money because they needed the money. The economy was very bad. Many of the people were poor.
- We lost control of that economy. Between about the 1960s and the 1980s, there was an increasing outside control of the wild rice economy on White Earth, where non-Indian rice buyers would come to the lakes, purchase rice green, process it, and market it off reservation to stores or wholesalers for marking it up considerably.
- And many times people never brought home their rice, it'd sold right off the boats to the buyers who had it finished, and it became a commercial venture.
- That process accelerated in the late '60s and the early '70s when the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture figured out how to domesticate wild rice. When they did that, it had a devastating impact on our community. What it did is it drove the price of rice down, and people who used to be able to go ricing to pay for their kids' school clothes, buy a chainsaw, buy fuel, oil, buy winter boots and coats, couldn't do that. Indians were getting paid 50 cents a pound for rice that in turn was marketed at gourmet stores for between five and $10 a pound. So the difference between that and the 50 cents that goes to an Indian is pretty substantial.
- [Darwin] Indeed, that was kind of hard to take. You know, go sell it for 50 cents. Some people sold for that too. And some people didn't like to sell because it's too cheap. But a lot of 'em had to.
- You know, people have always organized and fought for rice, fought against lowering water levels, and have continued that. And what we did is we formed a marketing collective called Ikwe. We got lake-certified organic on this reservation, which was the first time that it had been done. And then we went and bought it lakeside from ricers and processed it on reservation and marketed it. There's two consequences to that. The first was is that we captured the value added for the rice. We kept the money in the community.
- 315 pounds, huh ? Some of it's mine, I knocked some of it.
- The second thing that we did is that we were able to begin driving up the price of rice from 50 cents a pound to about $1 a pound.
- [Speaker] You rice any place else besides Big Rice Lake?
- Yeah, we went down Blackbird. My boy riced there in next lake there, South Chippewa.
- [Speaker] Then you sold that right down to the man down there?
- I think that's where he sold it. Yeah, yeah.
- [Speaker] And did they pay a dollar fine?
- They paid a dollar, yeah. Dollar.
- [Speaker] Some good rice over there. Clean.
- Good rice.
- Yeah.
- [Ricer] 56.
- [Winona] By the late '80s, the White Earth Tribal Council secured a grant and began Manitok, which is a marketing collective. And they came in and purchased, I think 70 or 80,000 pounds of rice. That transition on White Earth has meant that now the vast majority of the rice on this reservation is processed here. And the value added is kept locally.
- [Speaker] When the first harvest was finished of the rice, it was time to have this feast. This is one of the ways of taking care of that harvest and expressing their feelings, their feelings of gratitude for the things that they had.
- [Winona] Our cultural practices, whether they are harvesting, whether they're ceremonial, revolve around reaffirmation, annual seasonal reaffirmation of relationship of individuals, clans, families, nations to land. Those practices help us remember by what we eat, what we breathe, how we dance, what we sing for, what we see all around us, who we are.
- [Bob] So of course, there's certain ways about taking care of the lake and taking care of the rice stand itself. But an important part of taking care of it is the ceremony.
- [Winona] In our language, most nouns are animate. So manoomin, the word for rice, is animate. Asin, the word for stone, is animate, which means that all that which is around us is alive, has standing, has spirit on its own. That's why we reaffirm our relationship. And that is also why when you harvest, you always give thanks and ask that to give itself to you. And that is also why you have a thanksgiving after you harvest, you have a feast. That is how we guarantee our right to continue harvesting through that respectful, continuous intergenerational practice.
- [Speaker] What's "Indian time," to start off with?
- Indian time is marked by seasons. It's not marked by the hour or the clock. Each season brings with it a certain set of responsibilities and obligations and rites that have to be completed. We have the wild rice harvest, we have the berry harvest, we have the maple syrup harvest. When you look at the calendar, the moons, they say the berry picking moon or the sucker spearing moon or things like that. That's how they talk in the old way. They don't talk about they got this job and I have to be there at eight o'clock in the morning.
- [Dorothy] What kind of a person is Darwin? He's a really an outdoor man outside all the time. He's always been like that. He used to cut pulp a long time ago for a living. Had his own tractor and his truck. So I said he always liked the woods, hard work like that. He's doing it yet, up in the hills every day. That was Sunday, he went out to the woods. Well, he's always out there, but. Well, I'm going out to the woods, he said. No coffee, nothing. So I figured he'd be gone about half a day anyway. So he went. Didn't start worrying about him until about finally about four o'clock. Gee, I said, where is Darwin? He ain't even home yet, I said . Telling the kids something could have happened. Go out to the woods floor and look for that old man out there. We went out there. He looked up at us, give us a big smile. He was still flying wood out all day. He had a great big load. I really got worried about him that day.
- [Speaker] And Bill and Gail's children, Grace.
- Tell her bye.
- Bye bye. ♪ The first Noel the angels did say ♪ ♪ Was to certain poor shepherds ♪ ♪ In fields as they lay ♪ ♪ In fields where they lay keeping their sheep ♪ ♪ On a cold winter's night ♪
- [Speaker] You can go in any household, today, around here.
- I'm the only one up here.
- [Speaker] To the non-Native eye, you don't see it. But to the Native eye, it's there. Extended family still lives.
- [Dorothy] Yeah, my grandchildren are around most of the time, every day, screaming, fighting and everything all day long. Then pretty soon about, oh, I don't know, about seven, eight o'clock is when they all start going home. They go. Darwin, too. He always, he really misses them kids after they all go home at night. Peaceful, then but still, you enjoy them. You enjoy having them around. I always have a whole house full of kids, always.
- [Bob] But the other thing that we know about time, or we understand about time, is that it's timeless for us. Our history goes back a very, very, very long time. What we're doing now with this rice is just a continuation of something that started a very long time ago that's timeless. I mean, in a lot of ways, there is no time other than the seasons and the generations.
- [Gladys] When the old Indian people did anything, they had this feeling of sacredness about everything. And they picked the wiigwaas, the birch bark, the wiigo that they sold it with. But all these things, when they'd go out to get their supplies, they put down to that boat. Then it becomes kind of a prayer in your mind.
- [Darwin] Some nice designs on this one.
- [Bob] When we talk about taking care of the rice or taking care of the berries.
- [Speaker] I see that, Darwin.
- Taking care of the deer, taking care of the medicine plants, all the different things, from the standpoint of like agriculture, it really doesn't mean a lot because this stuff is wild. It's there for us. The rice grows in the water and the lakes and the streams, the rivers. The berries, they've been here as well. And they're as much of a part of the creation as we are. So when we take care of things, it's not a matter of going out and like cultivating or tilling or working the land or adjusting things. It's a matter of what happens in a person's heart and mind and spirit. What's going on there? That's how we take care of things. Because the things that are here on this land, they're here for a reason too. In part, to take care of Anishinaabe, in part to take care of the rest of the natural world. Those things are out there and they're quietly doing their job for the rest of the creation. And so that's what we're supposed to be doing as well, quietly doing our job. That means taking care of things in a way that does not disturb or destroy or alter the environment in any kind of a significant, meaningful sort of a way.
- [Speaker] How can you run with those big shoes on?
- [Mickey] I'm a dancer, and the powwow to me is, it's in the same category as ricing. It's one and the same. It's sacred, they're both sacred. They're both a purpose in life. And I love the powwow. The drum, the sacred circle, making old acquaintances stronger, keeping that bonding together.
- [Announcer] The celebration of a traditional gathering.
- [Mickey] Sharing losses, sharing gains. It all balances out.
- [Announcer] These will testify that our legacy, our history and culture and traditions will never die and be carried out by each and every one.
- [Mickey] I'm Anishinaabe, and I believe in my people and our way of life.
- [Announcer] Also bringing in the White Earth Nation Eagle Staff, we call upon Mr. Mickey Hodges, U.S. Army Special Forces, Vietnam. A big round of applause for this veteran.
- Mm, there's one. My uncles told me, when the plums are getting ripe, they're ripe the same time as the rice does in the nearby lake. And these plums here aren't quite ripe yet. And the lake isn't quite ripe. So, but as the plums ripe, so does the lake. That's how you can tell when a rice is ripe. I was told always to take what is given to us, the best of what is given to us. And what we can take and use, use it. What we can't use or we see as wrong, we tow that away. When I came here as a wild rice technician, my job is to drive the airboat. The airboat is a big issue on White Earth, it really is. A lot of people believe that it's disseminating our crop. We're taking more than we need. I look at it beneficially because we can gather so much rice and then we take this rice and we seed lakes that have gone dormant or that have died off.
- [Speaker] Is it a symbol?
- [Mickey] Maybe, maybe it is a symbol of frustration. Maybe it is people's resentments of the technological advances that are happening. How much a pound? We're catching up with technology today. It's a rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush world. Punch in, punch out, go, go go. Time was never a factor with my people. And that's the main concern is that we're adopting the wrong way of life. We're putting our old way on the side, living into this technological world. Everything's videos and satellite dishes. And I know just technology has taken over and there's no more respect for the land. Let's go out there and take it and get out. Those who are angry with the airboat, that's why, is that they see this as a technology. Slow it down, slow it down. I see it as frustrating because there's not many as ricers as there used to be. Maybe ricing is dying out too. People are frustrated with that. Like the camps we used to sit around and enjoy it. That was the fun time. Ricing time to me was the best time of the year. A lot of things are being lost.
- [Gladys] Grandpa was, like I say, basically an old Ojibwe man, very wise in Ojibwe ways. But he was really disturbed, I remember, when the motorboats came into that area. I think what he was talking about was pollution, all these things disturb the ecosystems. 'Cause when they do it by hand, some of the seeds fall back into the lake. And then some of the rice that's left also is food for the birds. And the birds spread the seed too, the ducks and the geese. So when it's done a natural way, it kind of takes care of a lot of other things. Those old people, the elders, understood that. And these are spiritual people too. They got an understanding from somewhere that the ordinary person didn't have the understanding.
- Come help me. Jamie, you get over here. This one.
- This one?
- Yeah. Now push in on it, like that. Don't push up. Okay, just push, yep.
- [Speaker] The elders are everything. They're the data bank, they're the computers. They've had all these years of knowledge.
- Be careful for your fingers.
- [Speaker] You know, all this knowledge from the generations and generations passed on, and they wanna share that.
- That's south, south this way.
- [Speaker] Like Darwin Stevens there, when we asked him to check the rice and he did check the rice. See, on lower Rice Lake, we have four strains of rice there. And he checked the lake and he said, this bed's ready and this bed's ready. And we said, okay, lower Rice Lake is open for ricing. And the people say it just poured off. People were coming up with hundreds and hundreds of pounds in one day ricing. And Darwin said, well, let's alternate every other day for ricing. And that's a good practice 'cause we let the manoomin rest. So the elders have this accumulated knowledge, and Darwin accumulated his knowledge from his parents and the parents of his grandparents. So at Darwin's age, he has the knowledge of his grandparents and his parents, and now his own knowledge.
- There's the old jigger they'd make. They put rice in it, then it's sat down on the ground. So deep, well like that. Yeah, I made one like that, I got one at home.
- [Speaker] The elders are leaving us. One by one, they're leaving us. And they're taking all this knowledge away. And once they're gone, it's gone forever. ♪ How sweet the sound ♪ ♪ That saved a wretch like me ♪ And it's a great loss that can never, ever be replaced. ♪ I once was lost, but now I'm found ♪ ♪ I was blind, but now I see ♪ And someday when Darwin Stevens leaves us to travel the spirit world, well, who are we gonna ask next? I don't know who to ask. We're slowly losing our elders, and the elders we're losing, we're losing their knowledge. And I don't know who to ask about my rice. So who's got the knowledge? The accumulated knowledge?
- I don't like to rice when it's windy. Hard to get the rice into the boat, I think. When I was playing, outta the way. Maybe these markers are too heavy.
- Yeah, I think so.
- I think so, Darwin.
- That's what's wrong.
- Because they're.
- You're used to them, right? They're heavy, aren't they?
- That's what it is, Darwin. Oh yeah, we've been ricing over 40 years. Like, talk about same partners, you know. I don't think I'd trust anybody else. I never did. And Darwin's never tipped me over. Never. Oh, we used to go over open water, rough waters, windy sometimes. Big waves coming right into the canoe. But we made it.
- [Speaker] Have you loved Darwin that whole time? Or is that?
- No . You asked me a silly question there. No, I didn't. Did you make me laugh? If I loved him on all them years. Oh . Oh, there's sometimes I hated him, or I hate him or something. I don't, you know I what I mean, just for a few seconds or something. No, I like the old man. He's good to me.
- [Gladys] The Ojibwe ways were really good ways. I think going through the whole process was a lot of family, a lot of learning, a lot of socializing, a lot of the things that we need to survive as a people. It was a slower process, but it took care of a lot of relationships. Other people said we were poor 'cause we didn't have no electricity and we just lived in a little small house, but we never felt deprived. We have the closeness of one another.
- Still some more.
- [Gladys] I guess no one can understand the richness that we had within our family, the things we believed in, the way we lived.
- [Dorothy] Remember them old rice camps? That's what they used to do. Then some old guys would be playing Moccasin Games and be cooking duck out there. Big kettles outside. Have a big duck feast before they go to bed. Pluck the whole ducks and singe them in the fire.
- [Gladys] You know, I think that progress is good, but I think we just really need to be careful about how we use it and how it affects our lives.
- Oh, I'm looking for the hulls to come off. Then you get the hulls off and they come off easy, then it's ready to, if it's here. You got your kicker full of rice, put your rice inside it, and then you get inside, and then you got a pole to hang onto. They used their feet to thrash it. They turned their feet on them. Oh, something like in the dance, you loose up the hull off turning.
- [Gladys] These things they taught me and these things that I watched them do, my hope now is that I can be the kind of grandparent that my grandparents were to me.
- Oh, you're tired too.
- [Gladys] In Ojibwe, Mino-Bimadiziwin means the good life. Mino means good. Life is bimadiziwin. That isn't only about wild ricing, it's about the good life of the people and what it means to the Ojibwe people. What good life means, the many gifts that really make up the good life that they have. And I think the wild ricing can mean that same thing to the young people today. And hopefully, they, like us, will inherit that good life, or the mino-bimadiziwin.
