Interdisciplinary Water Research and Advocacy Efforts to Protect Indigenous Treaty Rights in North-central Minnesota

After ceding land to Minnesota under treaties executed from 1855-1889, the Ojibwe people of Northern Minnesota moved on to reservations. However, the Tribe maintains hunting, fishing and gathering rights throughout all of Northern Minnesota. To the Indigenous Peoples, these rights are more than a formal permission to use resources. The land, water, animals and plants are relatives.

To the Ojibwe people, the growth, harvest, and consumption of wild rice (Manoomin) in particular, is sacred. Wild rice is the first and last solid food that indigenous people consume during their lives. In the Ojibwe creation story, the Creator told the people to settle in the place where food grows on the water. This sacred place turned out to be Northern Minnesota - land of the most productive wild rice beds in the world. Wild rice grows in Northern Minnesota’s lakes and streams and is extremely sensitive to chemicals, temperature, and water level.

While the Ojibwe people have been consuming wild rice as a primary form of sustenance and incorporating it as part of their sacred traditions for generations, worsening droughts induced by climate change and intensified pumping for industrial irrigated agriculture are combining to pose an immediate, existential threat to manoomin and, in turn, to the Ojibwe’s way of life.

During the summer of 2021, tribal community members in Northern Minnesota observed stream and wetland levels drop by more than a foot over the course of a couple weeks’ time. Farmers continued to pump tens of billions of gallons of water for irrigated corn and potato production amid one of the worst droughts seen in recent decades. The Natives feared 2021 would be the first time in more than 13 generations that the tribe would be unable to harvest wild rice.

The state of Minnesota has not effectively investigated or heeded the Tribe’s request for stronger manoomin and tribal protections. Part of the challenge is clearly indicating cause and effect for water quantity and quality impacts in a region where the sandy surficial aquifer is underlain by complex geology. Current research studies are underway by a collaboration between the University of Minnesota and the Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute to utilize existing data and acquire new data to defensibly identify relationships between industrial agriculture and observable water quality and quantity changes threatening wild rice production and the Ojibwe Tribe’s way of life.