Native American Herbal, Plant Knowledge

the grain -- it isn't really pounding. Then the bootaagan is emptied onto big birch-bark

trays and winnowed by tossing in a light breeze, which blows away chaff, while the

heavier grains fall back onto the trays (nooshkaatoon mahnoomin). Experienced older

women usually do this, it's harder than it looks -- judging the wind, the twist of the toss.

Different people take turns, 3 or 4 of them at a time lifting and dropping the heavy

poles as the bootaagan is refilled again and again with rice that's been parched.

Winnowed rice still has a few pieces of inner husk sticking to it. These are good to

eat, too, so to be really traditional, men "jig" this rice to separate the fine edible chaff

(mazaanens) for a different kind of food (mixed into little patties and fried, or served as

a mush). A barrel (makakosag) lined with deer hide is sunk 2/3 into the ground and 2

thick branches are arranged nearby as holds for the man who gets in the barrel with

new deerskin boots on and dances up and down to break away those little inner husks

without breaking up the rice (mimigoshkam). That's hard work, because the whole

weight should never come on the rice. He has to dance fast and light.

The Green of Life, Original Creation

Rice processed this way -- the same day it was brought in -- is called green rice

(ohshki bagoong mahnoomin--the word for green rice color is special, means "first

original color" ozaawashko is more ordinary blue-green). Oshki Anishinabe means

First, original, people. There are connotations of sacred, growth, and creative in the

word "oshki". Green rice has a lighter color (light brown speckled, actually) and a

different flavor than rice that dries in the sun. If it dries for several days in the sun, it

turns very black (makadewiminagad, black seed-grain only, black anything else is

makadewizi). It will keep forever. If not too broken up, it can also be used as seed grain

to re-seed damaged or over-harvested lakes. Some of this black rice is always cached

near where you got it, because rice won't usually grow in a different lake. Black rice

takes much longer to cook. If husked mechanically, its grains are usually broken.

After there's enough First Day rice prepared for everyone and the offerings, dinner is

cooked, usually with some wild birds and fish, and if no berries grow nearby some will

be brought -- dried Juneberries (miinan) and strawberries (odeiminun) from earlier in

the summer, dried blueberries (miinun) and raspberries (misko minun) from the

previous fall, maple sugar if you have any. Fresh elderberries (forgot the word) taste

awful, but sun-dried they're good. Some rice is boiled with and without meat. Some is

parched in fat, where it pops like popcorn (if the grains aren't broken and it's fresh).

And lots of other food too, of course. There is now singing and praying, and sometimes

if a Pipe carrier is there, a Pipe is smoked around. Dishes are prepared for the

Manidowug and left in several places -- out in the ricebed, in the woods, by a stream.

Then we eat! Miish, miijing Mahnoomin!

First Rice feast, by the side of the ricebed lake in the rice camps is like Thanksgiving

for American white people, or at least like how I assume that holiday feast once was for

them -- a celebration and thanks for the fruits of the harvest. Migwetch (thank-you)

Mahnoomin is the name of Anishinaabe First Rice feast. It is the rice, not the wild

birds, which was the staple most important food, and is the focus of the prayers and

thanks. If you live in the city and somebody gives you some First Rice, you should also

Wild Rice

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