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Mary Burns, weaver.
Ancestral Women Woven Portraits: handwoven jacquard portraits. Partial Exhibition at the Madeline Island Historical Museum on Madeline Island, Wisconsin (Lake Superior, WI).
Wild Ricing - 50” x 32”

From CVA's booklet (Wausau, WI) :
Harvested in the early autumn, wild rice was immensely important to Native Americans, particularly the Ojibwe and Menominee, who lived where it grew abundantly. The Menominee took their name from the word for wild rice, manomin, and were often referred to as the “Wild Rice People” by Europeans. Entire communities would move to the lakeshore for the harvest. Working in family groups, typically a man would pole a canoe out to the family’s section of the lake, where a woman, armed with two sticks, would bend the rice stalks over the canoe and knock off kernels until the canoe was full. On shore, the rice was sun-dried or parched over low fires, then danced or pounded to separate the grain from the husk, and finally winnowed in the wind. No food was more important to the tribes than wild rice. Native tribes, as well as traders, explorers, and missionaries, depended on the virtual imperishability of wild rice to stave off famine during the long winters.

Today, wild rice remains an essential staple food for Great Lakes Indian people.

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