by Patrick Springer

White Earth, Minnesota (AP/Forum of Fargo)

Earl and Kathy Hoagland glide through the reedy shallows with a fluid choreography of motion melded by decades of shared work.

Earl, planting his long pole in the muddy lake bottom, pushes their canoe through tall stands of wild rice as his wife uses two cedar sticks to knock ripened grains into their boat.

As a late summer day breaks, the couple work mostly in silence punctuated by the sound of kernels landing inside their aluminum canoe, a sound that reminds Kathy of rain drops falling on a tin roof.

That sound is echoed this time of year on lakes across the White Earth Reservation north of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota as members take part in the wild rice harvest, a tradition practiced for centuries by the Chippewa.

Rice supplies an important source of food and supplemental income for many families on White Earth, home to about 5,000 of the tribe’s almost 21,000 members.

Earl isn’t happy with the yield on South Chippewa Lake this summer. In fact, many of the region’s lakes have produced a poor crop. Members blame heavy rains early in the growing season, followed by wilting heat, then high winds that toppled stalks.

A successful outing can bring back a canoe-load of between 250 and 500 pounds of rice, which sells unfinished for $1.25 a pound. But the peak harvest lasts only a few weeks.

Long hours of poling through thick lake bottoms require upper body strength and endurance; the repetitive motions of wielding sticks to first pull the rice heads over the canoe and gingerly “knock” grains loose takes a toll after days or weeks.

“It’s very hard work,” Earl says. “If it was easy, a lot of people would do it.”

Every year, Lower Rice Lake, White Earth’s prime rice source, yields between 200,000 and 300,000 pounds, says Mike Swan, the tribe’s natural resources director. Roasted and finished in small local mills, hand-harvested lake rice sells for about $8.50 a pound.

For many families, rice money buys school clothes, helps pay the bills and provides food and fuel for the long winter.

“In our community, I would say most families in some way rely on this,” says Earl, 58, of Naytahwaush, a village of 400. “If it’s a poor crop, then they have to go without some things they could have otherwise.”

Tribal elders worry that fewer and fewer young people are taking up the arduous practice of harvesting rice, which requires long hours in a canoe and a tolerance for mosquitoes and the elements.

“It’s an art and it’s hard work,” says Swan, who estimates the average ricer today is 55 years old. “I hate to say it, but kids these days are too used to being in front of the TV set.”

Jim Shimek, 22, is one of the young residents of White Earth who takes part in the traditional hand harvest. Although much of his childhood was spent in Seattle, his family drove back to northern Minnesota every year for the rice harvest.

From the back of his canoe, which floats near the Hoaglands,’ Shimek admires the older man’s poling technique and agility. For a moment, Earl Hoagland appears to lose his steadiness, but quickly recovers his stance.

“About tipped ’em over,” Shimek said, chuckling. “Old Earl, he’s got good balance.”

As one of the oldest of nine children, Kathy Hoagland had to stay home to take care of her younger siblings when her mother left for the migratory harvest of wild rice on area lakes.

Hoagland, in her 50s, is from the generation that learned the traditional ways of the wild rice harvest, but never lived them as they had been lived by her ancestors.

Cars, modern housing and the drift away from the subsistence economy all contributed to the loss of traditional rice camps, when people gathered for the harvest. Each camp had a rice chief, and respected elders would decide when the rice was ready to be taken.

The ritual gatherings of late summer and fall were a time of hard work to prepare for the privations of winter, a time of harvesting rice and berries, of hunting and preserving meat. They were also a time of celebration, a time for feasting and dancing.

Five years ago, the people of White Earth revived the rice camps, this time as instructional gatherings. Elders, including the Hoaglands, teach younger members the old ways: how to paddle a canoe, how to net and clean fish, how to harvest and finish wild rice, how to make jellies and jams, syrup and birch-bark baskets.

The rice camps, held during the wild rice moon as August turns to September, take place at the tribe’s Rediscovery Center, a campus of three dormitories and four cabins overlooking White Earth Lake. Young and old mix for several days of demonstrations and talking circles, culminating in a feast to honor the elders.

Invitations to the young came with this admonition: no compact music players or radios to distract from the activities.

Lera Hephner, a 13-year-old girl, was surprised to learn how rigorous “dancing the rice” can be, a bit of footwork requiring a person to don moccasins and “dance” over rice in a pit to separate grains from their hulls all the while being careful not to crush the rice.

“There’s a lot of hard work that goes into the wild rice,” she says. “It’s humbling.”

This summer, one of Kathy Hoagland’s granddaughters made the transition from student to teacher. Taking part in her fifth rice camp, she’d learned enough to teach other youths how to make jam.

“We don’t have to be at a camp now to rice,” Hoagland says. “We can drive there by car, so we don’t stay at the rice lake anymore. A long time ago we got together and riced together and helped each other to make it through the winter, to survive the winter. Now it’s to survive as a people.”

When John Shimek looks at the activity on Lower Rice Lake, he sees pandemonium: a lake teeming with harvesters in canoes.

But when Mike Swan looks at the rice harvest on the same lake, he sees a much quieter lake than the harvests he remembers from the 1960s.

Today Swan estimates about 200 members are active participants in the White Earth wild rice harvest. Others estimate perhaps half of the families on the reservation harvest rice.

The White Earth tribe manages Lower Rice Lake, 1,500 acres dense with green wild rice stalks, where lakefront development is prohibited. The tribe assumed management of the lake’s watershed more than a decade ago, after agricultural runoff had diminished the rice crop.

Now the restored lake produces 11,000 to 15,000 pounds of rice a day, by Swan’s estimate. “That’s pretty darned good,” he says.

Lake development and runoff of herbicides and nutrients from farm fields aren’t the only threat to wild rice.

Chippewa, also called Ojibwe and Anishinabe, have united in their opposition to genetic modification of wild rice. This year a bill before the Minnesota Legislature would have banned genetically engineered wild rice. The measure had the tribes’ backing, but was tabled.

“The wild rice is very sacred to us,” Earl Hoagland says. “We consider it to be from the Creator.”