The Institute on the Environment (IonE) has awarded a group including Professor Mae Davenport with a 2022 Impact Goal Grant to study the agricultural impacts on Manoomin (Ojibwe) / Psiη (Dakota) / wild rice. IonE's Impact Goals are designed to drive progress in areas where solutions have been slow to develop or have been prevented. They help us and our community focus resources and attention in priority areas and inspire collaborations that serve Minnesota and scale to the world.
Examining Agriculture-Groundwater-Wild Rice Pathways Through Cross-Cultural Observations
Project Team: G.-H. Crystal Ng, Department Earth & Environmental Sciences, UMN-Twin Cities; Zhaashiigid Nooding (a.k.a. Bob Shimek), Indigenous Environmental Network; Mae Davenport, Department of Forest Resources, UMN-Twin Cities; Cara Santelli, Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, UMN-Twin Cities; Zixuan Chen, Water Resources Science, UMN-Twin Cities
What we do to Manoomin (Ojibwe) / Psiη (Dakota) / wild rice we do to ourselves. This tenet compels us to gather stories through water analyses and discussions with local knowledge holders in the Otter Tail Watershed. We will ask what is the relationship between land-use change and declines of Manoomin/Psiη, and specifically, are agricultural contaminants in groundwater reaching and harming Manoomin/Psiη lakes? The project includes an integrated eco-cultural story map that offers adaptation strategies for Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental stewards, harvesters, and farmers. This will be, to our knowledge, the first academic study of agricultural impacts on Manoomin/Psiη.