Plants as partners: honoring the personhood of Manoomin in research, restoration, and education

Across the Great Lakes region, Manoomin (wild rice) provides sustenance for Indigenous Peoples, yet has been in decline since the onset of Euro-American colonization. The Anishinaabe (a large group of Indigenous peoples, Great Lakes, North America) collaborate with Manoomin, university scientists, and others to inform research, restoration, and education to protect this sacred relative. We engaged Anishinaabe Ecological Knowledge to conceptualize these interspecies collaborations through an Ojibwe (an Anishinaabe people) Medicine Wheel: four foundational directions that begin in the east where the sun rises and moving-clockwise around the circle—Anishinaabeg (original people), Gidinawemaaganimin (all our relations), Aki (earth, land, and ground), and Manoomin—each with a role in Manoomin’s Mino-bimaadiziwin (wild rice’s good life). The Manoomin Medicine Wheel framework serves as a guiding example of how Indigenous worldviews can offer pathways for repairing our relationships with our relatives by partnering with plants in the face of climate change and biocultural loss.