Three Years of Harvest Camp
To build durable movements, we must deepen relationships with place and community.
Last week, I helped organize a Community Harvest Camp with Indigenous culture-bearers, environmental justice organizers, and students from the Twin Cities metro. We assembled on Anishinaabe homelands in northern Minnesota, for a weekend of harvest education and art making. Sharing stories around campfires, it became evident that we gathered for many different reasons. Some to honor the treaties signed by ancestors protecting the right to harvest manoomin (wild rice). Others with a gentle curiosity to learn about manoomin for the very first time. Some to share knowledge with cityfolk. Others to get a breath of fresh air outside of the metro haze. But all of us showed up to deepen connections to place and community.
My role as an organizer was logistics. Making sure everybody had a place to sleep, food to eat and an orientation to place. In the immediate aftermath of harvest camp, my brain still foggy from logistics, I started writing a poem titled: “A Love(Hate) Letter to Logistics,” but quickly realized it was the least interesting thing anybody had ever written. (If you want me to finish and release it, comment below). Thankfully for you all, I put down my *proverbial* pen and went to sleep. When I picked it back up, my mind immediately went to a point of conversation from the last day of camp: building durable and powerful land-defense movements through connection to place and each other. How do we garner such connections in the Minnesota northlands? By learning about harvest!
Harvest camps offer an opportunity to build community and connect with place. Usually held over a full weekend, people share meals, stories, skills, tents, cigarettes, dish duty, and of course, knowledge of harvesting and processing manoomin. A community emerges in real time as people share camp tasks, confront arising challenges, and meet others with diverse arrays of knowledge.
Three years ago, I was a college student in a car headed up north for my first harvest camp. I had some vague idea of what manoomin was, although I had never actually seen nor touched it. Similarly, I had studied colonialism in classrooms, but knew little about how it plays out today. Harvest camp laid bare the threat that colonial extraction poses to manoomin.
Sharing stories around a campfire, I learned about the Ojibwe creation story from Charlotte Loonsfoot, Keweenaw Bay Chippewa tribal member. To paraphrase Charlotte: Centuries ago, the Ojibwe received a message from their Creator that the white race was coming, and they must migrate to “the land where the food grows on the water.” When they arrived at what is now called the Great Lakes region, they found wild rice, or manoomin, growing on lakes. This manoomin, which is sacred to Ojibwe culture and has sustained Ojibwe communities for generations, is under attack. First by the logging industry stealing 1854-55 treaty-protected lands, then by an oil corporation constructing a tar-sands pipeline through reservations, and now by mining corporations invading sacred lands.
In the face of such threats, what is our greatest defense? Relationships to place and each other. Before rice camp, I had considered myself an activist somewhat engaged in water protector movements. However, I had no relationship to the land impacted, nor the people who it sustained. Gathering in place around sacred harvest practices fosters connection to these important lands. For activists and organizers like myself who come from urban centers, this means getting out of cities and onto the land most directly impacted. Harvest camp has been transformational for me and I have been deeply humbled by the teachings of both the friends I have made, and also the manoomin itself.
My first time harvesting, I earnestly asked for instructions and was told: “listen to the manoomin.” It turns out the manoomin had much to share. Harvesting manoomin is a two person task. One person wields a 15-20 foot pole with a pronged end, used to navigate lakes dense with wild rice plants. The other person hold knockers, small wooden sticks used to knock ripened manoomin grains into the canoe, which is later taken ashore and processed. Patience, collaboration and keen observation of your surroundings are all crucial skills. For example, the density of the wild rice plants dictates how fast the canoe can move. A denser lake means more rice to harvest, but also more difficult maneuvering, as moving too fast through the manoomin can damage the long-term health of the plants. This was a particularly abundant season and I was overwhelmed by the amount of manoomin there was to harvest. I was also quick to frustration over my inconsistency at knocking rice into the boat, although I later learned that Indigenous people intentionally leave behind rice for non-human relatives. Eventually, I learned to listen to the rice and move at the pace that it tells me. Slowing down required a level of intentionality that did not come naturally to me. However, those whose ancestors have been harvesting manoomin for thousands of years maneuvered their poles and knockers with an incredible fluidity. The result: a canoe heaping with manoomin.
However, abundant seasons are becoming fewer and farther between. One explanation is the encroachment of extractive industry on the land where food grows on water. With the building of an oil pipeline and exploration of mining companies, manoomin is under attack. Talon Mine, a project by Talon Metals and Rio Tinto, is a nickel-sulfide mine planned in Northern Minnesota and is the most recent threat to manoomin. Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that sulfide mining in a water-rich environment leads to disaster, many powerful interests, including the federal government, are pushing for more mining. Corporations and their government partners are greenwashing their operations, creating a deceptive narrative that to solve the climate crisis, we must transition from fossil fuel extraction to mineral extraction. The result of this narrative is a “green energy transition” plan that turns Indigenous communities into sacrifice zones. 97% of the nickel reserves targeted for extraction in the U.S. are located within a 35-mile radius of Native American reservations.
Spending even a single weekend on this land, it is apparent that this place cannot be sacrificed. For one, are we really prepared to throw away this place so that Elon Musk can sell rich people more Teslas1? What about the threat to clean water and an abundant “carbon-free” food source, both increasingly important as the climate crisis escalates? There are many sound arguments why a toxic mine should not be constructed in a culturally significant, water-abundant, food-abundant place. When paired with a strong connection to the impacted land, these arguments precipitate in deeply committed organizers and durable movements.
Successful, durable movements are not made by flashy actions or theoretical analysis of “the issue.” They are made by relationships, understanding the stories of the land and people taking action to protect it. This means moving away from a prevalent modality of “helicopter organizing,” in which individuals or non-profits swoop in just as crisis reaches a climax to gain prominence by circulating a hashtag or staging a symbolic action. Instead, we can deepen commitments to protect land and each other by gathering around harvest and developing strategies rooted in leadership of frontline communities. Manoomin harvest camp in Anishinaabe territory, Northern Minnesota, is an annual invitation to plant or grow such commitments.
This year at harvest camp, I had the privilege of taking on a new role. I was able to help others facilitate similar connections that were so fundamental to my growth as an organizer. I am excited by the potential for solidarity between metro-based organizers/non-profits - who possess the resources and people-power necessary to stop a mine - and Indigenous/rural leaders on the frontlines of such extraction. This solidarity is an essential ingredient to foster the durable movements we need to build a better world. And it is made possible when we gather around the harvest practices that make this place special.
You can subscribe for free to be notified when I share new writing.
If you’re able to financially support my work, paid subscriptions allow me to spend fewer hours working at the deli and more hours writing! Free subscriptions and sharing with friends is also helpful and I am appreciative of each and every one of you.
Some of the nickel Talon hopes to mine is slated to be used in Tesla’s EV batteries
I learned a lot. And love the overall message.
As always… learned so much! Powerful stuff. Hoping many read and learn as I have. Thank you.