Feature Article February 26, 2004
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Manomin a family legacy that sparked a rice war Part One
In
late August of 1981, a showdown took place between people from in and
around the tiny hamlet of Ardoch and a police squad that included up
to 50 police cars, two helicopters and a paddy wagon. And it was all
over the manomin, a plant that was brought to Mud Lake, a bulge in the
Mississipi River, by Harold Perrys great grandmother Mary Whiteduck,
and which had been nurtured by the succeeding generations of the
Whiteduck-Perry family.
Harold Perry was just over 50 at the time, having grown up and lived most of his life on a point of land that overlooks Mud Lake. Now 74, Perry recalls how a neighbour heard what sounded like a helicopter buzzing around Mud Lake in late August of 1979, and how it turned out that the man in a mechanical harvesting boat had a valid permit from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to harvest the wild rice for commercial purposes.
This event has had reverberations for the native community in Frontenac County ever since, leading to the formation of Indian, Metis and Settlers Wild Rice Association (IMSET) and the Ardoch Algonquin First Nations and Allies (AAFNA), in the early nineties. It also led to an enduring cultural and political alliance between Harold Perry and Bob Lovelace, who was then a community legal worker with North Frontenac Community Services.
In recent years a land claims process has been undertaken for Algonquin peoples of the Ottawa Valley, and differing positions vis-vis this process has led to rifts between native families in the region. There are now two groups based in Sharbot Lake: the Sharbot Lake Anishnabe and the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, and both are involved in the lands claims process.
At the same time, the Ardoch Algoinquin First Nation and Allies, with Bob Lovelace and Randy Cota as chiefs and Harold Perry as honorary chief, has carried on with a more radical approach, rejecting the land claims process and insisting that only when native peoples are able to negotiate from a position of power rather then dependence can a successful political settlement of outstanding territorial issues take place.
Over the next few weeks, the News will explore the events of the past 20 years that have led to the acrimonious state of relations that exist, specifically between the two groups claiming to represent the Ardoch Algonquins. But to understand what is going on today, we will look first at the world as it was when Harold Perry experienced his first manomin keezis, the wild rice moon in the fall of 1930, in a native community on the shores of Mud Lake.
At that time, Harolds family still led basically a subsistence existence, and he recalls busy days spent gathering wood, hunting and fishing, and taking care of other chores around the settlement. Harolds direct family had lived year round in Ardoch for several generations, and the area had been the site of seasonal habitation for many centuries, perhaps millennia. Harold has found simple tools on the land around Ardoch that have been dated at well over a thousand years.
In an article posted on the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation and Allies website, Bob Lovelace writes about land that was reserved for Algonquin use at Bobs Lake as early as 1844, but says this early reserve was devastated by illegal logging operations in the 1850s and the Algonquin families retreated to marginal and unsettled lands. In the 1860s many of the lands around what are now Central and North Frontenac were granted to European settlers and that had an immediate impact on the native population, since many of the 100-acre parcels had been used for hunting and Maple syruping.
Lovelace also writes that racism expressed by the settler population toward Indian people was crushing. Indian men were denied respectable labour and women were relegated to being chore girls and worse. Still, the Ardoch Algonquins survived, and the wild rice that was planted by Mary Whiteduck in the 1890s attracted people from other communities to the west, as the wild rice stands in Rice Lake were in a state of decline.
Harold Perry recalls gathering rice and learning how to cultivate the beds as a child. He attended school, carrying a 22 caliber rifle with him on the walk so he could hunt on his way home. After the end of World War 2, Harold moved to Toronto to work and get some education in the building trades. He returned to Ardoch after 11 years, set up a contracting business and built a home.
From his youth, Harold Perry has been an avid canoeist, and he liked to take trips out to the wilderness in the Lake of the Woods area in search of Caribou. Whenever he would plan his trips, it seemed that whoever was supposed to go with him would end up pulling out at the last minute. So, when Harold decided to design and build canoes in the early 70s, he wanted to design a canoe that was strong enough for wilderness use, but lightweight enough for a single paddler to portage, carrying all the needs for a two-week trip. The design he ended up with has a cedar core, with a layer of Styrofoam and a skin of aircraft aluminium. The canoes are highly prized, and not that easy to come by. Harold doesnt make them as often now as he used to, though he did train a nearby carpenter, Gary Weber, to make them.
In the late 1960s the rice beds on Mud Lake were almost destroyed by a chemical that was sprayed on the nearby hydro lines and which leached into the water. The chemical was 24D 245T, also known as Agent Orange. Richard Perry, Harolds father, spent the late 60s and the early 70s, painstakingly gathering seed in the fall and storing them in sacks in the frozen water for planting in the spring, when the chances of survival are the best. Manomin is an annual plant, and the seeds drop down into the mud under the water and embed themselves. When Richard Perry died in 1974, Harold was left as the steward of the rice, a job he has carried on until this day. Some years the rice is plentiful, and can sustain a harvest; in those years the word is sent out and people came to help with the harvest. On other years, the beds must be left to reseed, and instead of being gathered, the seed heads are knocked off the plant stalks into the water to help the process along.
The rice beds have been secure since the 70s, the only threat being the incidents that sparked the rice wars of 1979-1981. These will be the subject of part two.
