American Indian Solutions to Environmental Challenges

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  Toggle Favorite “We know that everything that we do harms the resources.”
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  Toggle Favorite Rice beds provide food and shelter for numerous species of birds, fish, and other animals. 1998
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  Toggle Favorite “There are several threats to wild-rice productivity and the sustainability of wild rice. One of the major threats is overdevelopment of lakes, wild-rice lakes.”
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  Toggle Favorite Since the 1880s, dams have flooded wild-rice habitat along the Mississippi River drainage. More than 2000 dams in Minnesota and Wisconsin pose risks to wild rice plants. 1904
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  Toggle Favorite “Invasives also have the potential to alter the way ecosystems function. . . . Each plant or animal has a specific function, and we as biologists don’t necessarily know what each one of those functions are. So we always kind generalize and say protect as much as you possibly can.”
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  Toggle Favorite Purple loosestrife is a beautiful but aggressive invasive species that crowds out wild rice. Brought to North America in the 1800s for flower gardens, it quickly spread throughout the U.S. 2006
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  Toggle Favorite If Asian carp work their way upstream to the Leech Lake reservation, shallow-rooted rice could be damaged by their foraging, and they could pose a threat to other fish. The damage Asian carp could do is so serious, laws have been passed making it illegal to import them. Date unknown
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  Toggle Favorite “Any impact — environment, whether it’s an oil spill or an invasive species — has greater impact here on a reservation because it’s culturally important and also spiritually. It helps people connect with their past, connect with their ancestors.”
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  Toggle Favorite From the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, logging stripped the Leech Lake area of trees, increasing sediment in lakes and rivers. Change in sediment chemistry is thought to affect the establishment of wild-rice plants. 1892
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  Toggle Favorite “Wild rice is much like the Ojibwe people are: part of their natural world. Historically, the wild rice is also a part of its ecosystem, intimately tied to its ecosystem. And this cultivated rice violates that arrangement.”

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