About the Producer
Native Harvest opened with a large community feast for about 100 people on May 18th. Community members saw demonstrations by local artisans, sampled Native Harvest products, and enjoyed a community meal of wild rice, hominy soup, and homemade baked goods. Native Harvest produces and sells a selection of traditional foods, including wild rice, hominy, maple syrup, and jellies. Most of these foods are grown and harvested locally, and then are processed on site at the new building. Native Harvest acquired the building with the help of the Midwest Minnesota Community Development Corporation, and remodeled the kitchen into a state of the art commercial kitchen. “Our new kitchen equipment has made it easier to roast our hominy, can our jellies and jams, and package all of the foods we sell. This facility will allow us to take our production to the next level, and hopefully create more jobs for the community,” said Florence Goodman, Native Harvest Food Production Coordinator.

The new building also provides a beautiful space for community meetings, workshops and other activities. Already this spring, the area was put to good use holding community gardening and permaculture workshops, as well as art projects for youth. The White Earth Land Recovery Project, also moved their Gammill quilting machine into the new facility, and will be training community members to use the machine. In addition, other WELRP educational workshops on everything from basket making to language retreats will be held in the new facility. We hope the Native Harvest facility will be a valuable asset to our community, and encourage you to stop by and visit us.

Native Harvest Production has a new Home!!

During the summer of 2006, the White Earth Land Recovery Project purchased the former Callaway Elementary School and has moved Native Harvest production facilities to this larger facility. This new facility houses not only Native Harvest production, but the administrative offices for both the White Earth Land Recovery Project and Native Harvest. Once again, we are back into a larger and more efficient facility.

The former Native Harvest production facility is now called the Minwanijige Cafe.

Wild Rice: Protecting Our Sacred Manoomin

Wild Rice is a central part of Anishinaabeg culture and tradition. Today, Ojibwe communities in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Canada harvest and process wild rice, following the traditions of their ancestors. Manoomin, or wild rice is part of the Anishinaabeg migration stories and prophecies and continues to define what it means to be Anishinaabeg. Our campaign to protect wild rice started to combat the misuse and misrepresentation of this sacred food by the paddy rice industry created by the University of Minnesota. Our work focuses on combating the genetic manipulation, patenting and the misrepresentation of wild rice locally, nationally and internationally. The focus of our campaign is to work with all tribes who harvest wild rice, to protect against genetic manipulation, patenting and taking the essence of our wild rice and leaving our people with nothing.

Local Anishinaabeg harvesters gathering wild rice using the traditional method.

Our work began in 2002 with the historic gathering that brought together traditional rice harvesters from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to meet with members from the academic, scientific and non-profit communities. This meeting set the foundation for our ongoing struggle to protect the sacred wild rice from issues of bio-piracy, further genetic manipulation, patent struggles and labeling issues.

Over the last year, we have worked on four main componets of our wild rice campaign. Protecting the intellectual property rights of the Anishinaabeg, opposing genetic modification and contamination of wild rice, promoting a fair trade for traditionally hand harvested natural lake wild rice, and educating on the tradition and culture surrounding wild rice. We have made much progress and have laid the groundwork for our upcoming work to protect wild rice through the Minnesota State Legislature.

To learn more about our efforts to protect the sacred wild rice from GMO's, please visit http://www.savewildrice.org