Menominee Tribe restores wild rice with ancient-inspired planting method

A canoe carrying small brown clay balls is moving more than seeds across the water. On Little Rice Lake and Rice Lake, the Menominee Tribe is using a planting method that blends traditional ecological knowledge with a new tool designed to help manoomin return to the reservation’s largest waters. With DJ Micik at the paddle and his 6-year-old son, Liam, riding with him, the work feels both immediate and generational, a sign that restoration here is as much about inheritance as it is about habitat.

A planting method built for the lake

The clay balls in Micik’s canoe are the heart of the new approach. Packed with seeds, they are designed to sink to the lake bottom, settle into soft mud, and give the rice a better chance of surviving harsh winters and increasingly erratic precipitation. Micik describes the clay shell as acting “like a mother’s womb,” a phrase that captures the blend of care and function behind the technique.

This is not a nostalgic return to old ways for its own sake. It is a practical adaptation that uses modern planting methods while honoring the responsibilities the Menominee have long carried toward the water and the rice. The Great Lakes Commission has also highlighted the effort as a new technique meant to bring wild rice back to northern Wisconsin waters, underscoring that the work in Menominee County is part of a broader regional search for ways to rebuild what has been lost.

Why manoomin matters here

Wild rice, or manoomin, is not just another wetland plant. The U.S. Geological Survey describes it as an essential, sacred species for Native people throughout the Upper Great Lakes region and as an indicator of ecosystem health. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Encyclopedia of Milwaukee notes that wild rice was and is a staple food crop for Native American tribes in Wisconsin, traditionally grown in shallow water and harvested in the fall by hand from ricing canoes.

For the Menominee, that cultural link runs especially deep. The tribe has described itself as the “Wild Rice People,” and tribal history materials say surrounding tribes knew the Menominee as “Omaeqnomenewak,” meaning “Wild Rice People,” because of their subsistence on wild rice. That identity is not symbolic only. It ties food, language, and stewardship together in a living relationship with the lakes.

The Menominee say their history in what is now Wisconsin stretches back about 10,000 years. Tribal history materials also note that the Menominee once occupied an estimated 10 million acres at the start of the treaty era, but now hold a little more than 235,000 acres after seven treaties with the United States. Another tribal history page says the tribe’s origin story begins at the mouth of the Menominee River, about 60 miles east of the current reservation, a reminder that the rice work today grows out of a long struggle to remain rooted in place.

What restoration looks like on the ground

The planting itself is only one part of the recovery effort. Across the Upper Midwest, wild rice has declined under pressure from climate change, agriculture, pollution, and other land-use changes. Great Lakes restoration work has also shown that bringing rice back can require seeding lakebeds, monitoring water quality, managing geese, and tracking lake levels, all while paying close attention to the specific conditions each lake presents.

That local monitoring matters in Menominee County because success will not be measured by planting alone. It will be measured by whether the rice takes hold in the lakebed, whether the water stays suitable for growth, and whether the rice can return as a reliable food source and part of the ecosystem. In a place where wild rice once helped define both the landscape and the people living with it, the real test is whether the lakes can support manoomin year after year.

The tribe’s environmental services directory shows how seriously that work is organized. Its staff includes specialists in wildlife, fisheries, water resources, invasive species, and environmental services, which means this restoration is embedded in an ongoing natural-resources program rather than handled as a one-time event. That kind of structure is important when the work depends on reading lake conditions, adjusting tactics, and protecting young rice as it begins to establish itself.

Restoration as sovereignty, foodway, and policy fight

For the Menominee, restoring manoomin is also a matter of sovereignty. The tribe’s mission says the Omaeqnomenewak seek to promote, protect, and preserve their rights, resources, and culture through sovereign powers, and the rice project fits that mandate closely. Bringing back a plant that feeds people, supports wildlife, and signals healthy water is a form of governance in practice, not just a cultural gesture.

That sovereignty is being tested by outside pressures. Midwest Environmental Advocates says it is representing the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin in an active legal challenge involving a potent herbicide that could damage wild rice beds within the reservation and interfere with treaty rights. The dispute adds urgency to the restoration work and shows how environmental protection, legal rights, and public health are tied together when a community depends on clean water and intact food systems.

The Menominee’s effort also reflects a wider truth across the Great Lakes: tribes are often the ones pushing the most grounded, science-informed restoration work because the survival of a species and the survival of a community are linked. In Little Rice Lake and Rice Lake, the clay-seeded canoe is carrying that idea forward one plant at a time. For Menominee County, manoomin is not just coming back as heritage. It is being rebuilt as a working system of food, stewardship, and continuity.