Genetically Engineered Wild Rice Threatens Traditional Native Varieties

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Rice research treads on sacred ground Paul Levy Minneapolis Star Tribune
Published October 5, 2005

PONSFORD, MINN. -- Wayne and Gordon Stevens ignored the drizzle, the approaching charcoal-colored clouds, even their own frosted breath as they settled their canoe last week into shallow, reedy Lower Rice Lake, the primary source of wild rice on the White Earth Indian Reservation.

"Eight years ago, me and my older brother, John, poled two miles out in the lake in October, breaking ice out there just to get to the rice," Wayne, 52, said as Gordon, 49, jabbed a 16-foot pole through the 34-degree mist, into the lake's muddy floor and pushed the canoe through the 4-foot-high strands of wild rice.

"It's probably too cold to be out today, but this might be the last day of the ricing season," Wayne said.

"And if those researchers at the university have their way, this could be one of the last days of wild ricing ever, maybe the last of wild rice as we know it."

A half-century-old clash of spirituality and science between Minnesota Indian tribes that consider wild rice sacred and University of Minnesota scientists who continue to study its genetic make-up is again boiling over.

This difference of culture and world view has evolved into a battle of ethics and, the tribes fear, the potential loss of Minnesota's state grain through cross-pollination with a genetically engineered species.

When Ronald Phillips, director of the Center for Microbial and Plant Genomics on the university's St. Paul campus, and his staff published a mapping of the wild rice genome five years ago, there were rumblings at White Earth and other northern reservations that the blueprint for developing genetically enhanced wild rice had been set.

As research at the university continues, fear on the reservations escalates.

"We're not scientific Frankensteins," said Charles Muscoplat, dean of the university's College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences. "Ron Phillips has said for years he would not create a genetically engineered wild rice. We know wild rice, to the Indians, is sacred, given to them by the Creator, that it's central to their traditional rituals, feasts and ceremonies.

"As a gift from the Creator, it's perfect. They don't question that. But Western science is based on questioning. We have a completely different world view.

"If a faculty member can get the money to do research, we do it."

Income, land deals Money cannot buy culture and tradition, but it, too, plays a pivotal role in the tribes' anxiety about the university's research.

Wayne Stevens, a carpenter who works at the reservation's Shooting Star Casino in Mahnomen, said that one day last month he and his brother collected 9 sacks of wild rice -- more than 600 pounds, for which they are paid up to $1.35 per pound. "Took us seven hours and it's hard work," he said. "But where else are you going to earn money like that this fast?"

Heavy rains during the growing season, followed by staggering heat and strong winds that blew away stalks made this year's ricing season erratic. Yet, more than 300,000 pounds were harvested from Lower Rice Lake, said Sarah Alexander, wild rice campaign director for the White Earth Land Recovery Project.

The Land Recovery Project, started in 1989 by activist Winona LaDuke, processes and packages the rice in Ponsford and then sells it through Minnesota cooperatives and the Internet. Last year, the nonprofit organization bought 60,000 pounds of wild rice and sold most of it for a retail price of $8.50 per pound. Money from sales is used to acquire land the Ojibwe people say was taken from them more than a century ago in shady deals by government officials, lumber barons and railroad officials. "We don't think scientists have the right to contaminate the state grain -- and it could happen through cross-pollination, if they develop a genetically enhanced wild rice and plant it in Minnesota," LaDuke said. For a people whose history includes a staggering list of promises broken, concern over cross-pollination is well-grounded, said George Spangler, who teaches conservation biology at the University of Minnesota.

"For Native Americans, the question isn't whether research is being done to make the plant better," Spangler said. "It's whether something that is sacred to the Ojibwe people might be changed. For them, assurances are hard to come by."
Said LaDuke: "Aside from wild rice being sacred to the Ojibwe people, and aside from the university's obligation to serve all people in Minnesota, including the tribes, what sense does it make to spend so much time and money on wild rice? People want it and are willing to buy it because they like it the way it is."
A prior mistake Arguments over wild rice in Minnesota began in the early 1950s, when farmers in northeastern Minnesota asked university researchers if there was a way to domesticate wild rice, so that it could be cultivated as a new crop, Muscoplat said.

"Our mistake, back then, was our failure to include Native American groups in those discussions," he said.

By 1967, Minnesota farmers were cultivating wild rice in paddies. Over the past five years, Minnesota has produced between 4.3 and 6.2 million pounds of processed cultivated wild rice (often called paddy rice), second only to California, which produced 8.8 to 18 million pounds, Muscoplat said.

"We're trying to look at this fair-mindedly, that efficiency and abundance is a good thing," said Craig Hassel, a nutritionist in the university's department of Food, Science and Nutrition. "It's easy to assume scientific perspectives are superior. But that world view is not shared on the reservation."

Paul Schultz, 60, one of White Earth's spiritual elders, explained, "When the gift of manoomin [wild rice] was first given to the people by the Creator, we were never hung up with the notion that it was just food. There were questions we didn't need to answer. There was a profound understanding of the need to keep the spiritual connection."

The university's research -- which may eventually help scientists better understand the genetic makeup of corn, Muscoplat said -- has raised red flags off the reservations, too.

Last month, the state Episcopal Diocese's Department of Indian Work passed a resolution asking the Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty to protect "sacred wild rice from the potential contamination of genetic engineering." Muscoplat says scientists are at least a decade away from creating a new strain of wild rice. "But what if somebody in China or Russia did it?" he asked.

For the Stevens brothers, the debate extends beyond supply and demand. With long cedar sticks used to whack ripened grains of wild rice into their boat, they headed slowly into Lower Rice Lake, where only canoes are allowed.

"I've been doing this since I was 11," Wayne said. "My father did this. It's what our people do. It's a gift from the Creator."

Paul Levy is at plevy@startribune.com.