Honoring the Third Fire: Investigating Claims to Ownership of Seeds as Reproducible Property

View the project final report

• 2005 annual report
• 2006 annual report
• 2007 annual report

Commodities

• Agronomic: general grain crops
• Additional Plants: native plants

Practices

• Education and Training: focus group, workshop
• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity, wetlands, wildlife
• Production Systems: agroecosystems
• Sustainable Communities: community services, public participation, social capital, sustainability measures

The Department of Rural Sociology at UW-Madison will partner with the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WERLP) from Minnesota in a research program designed to investigate and facilitate the dialogue about wild rice on and near the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. This program will encourage the exchange, development, and documentation of ideas about the importance of wild rice as a natural and cultural resource through interviews and participation in two day-long public meetings. The Anishinaabe live primarily on reservations in the upper Midwestern United States and Central Canada. Their territory overlaps with the center of biodiversity for wild rice. The third prophesy, or the third fire, of the Anishinaabe establishes wild rice as their most important cultural and spiritual resource. The Anishinaabe are worried about the effects of new technologies that support the genetic engineering and commercial cultivation of wild rice. In particular, the Anishinaabe are also concerned about the consequences that genetically engineered wild rice could have for natural stands. The Anishinaabe’s fear is that either the cultivated varieties of wild rice or the genetically engineered varieties will pollute natural stands of wild rice. Through interviews and workshops, we will engage the Anishinaabe in a dialog about their claims to ownership over the genetic resources of wild rice. The evolution, character, and strength of these claims are extremely important for the future of their traditional harvest of wild rice. During the year July 1, 2004 through June 30, 2005, we have planned six trips to the White Earth reservation. We will conduct both process and outcome evaluations for the workshops and interviews.

The Department of Rural Sociology at UW-Madison will partner with the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WERLP) from Minnesota in a research program designed to investigate and facilitate the dialogue about wild rice on and near the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. This program will encourage the exchange, development, and documentation of ideas about the importance of wild rice as a natural and cultural resource through interviews and participation in two day-long public meetings. Through both presentations and dialogue, these meetings will explore the importance of wild rice to the Anishinaabe, to non-native communities and ecosystems in Wisconsin, and to the larger agricultural and political landscape of the United States. The results of the project will be disseminated to the Wisconsin and Minnesota public, and to the sustainable agriculture community through reports, newspaper articles, and as a module in a web-based, nation-wide, sustainable agriculture curriculum. A UW-Madison graduate student and Anishinaabe consultant will work together to gather materials, organize, and develop a final product documenting the results of the project.