Conclusions

While the White Earth tribe is by no means food secure, food security in the view of many on the reservation does not arise from and is currently not possible through the state. Community-based decision-making around food security that is rooted in traditional knowledge and practices is demonstrated in the ‘gift economy’ of wild rice on the White Earth Indian Reservation. Up until the middle of the twentieth century, the communal and inter-tribal ricing season in the autumn would supply each family with enough rice to eat for one year and a small amount for trading. Anything left would be distributed among the families in the tribe, particularly to those without able-bodied adults and to the elderly. This practice, now dramatically changed, continues in the ritual gifting of rice in nearly every social interaction. For example, wild rice is given to the host, particularly elders, whenever a person is invited to a home. It is also evident in the ritualized exchanges of rice at tribal gatherings such as a drum ceremony, which was criminalized and forbidden until 1978. While this gift economy has been disrupted by the dramatic disruptions that colonialism, racism and genocide have brought the Anishinabe tribes, a subjectivity based on the non-monetary exchange and circulation of food in the interests of food security persists. These transactions also cannot be regulated or criminalized by the state because they are non-commodified exchanges.