[Capri] The food that grows on water.

Wild rice is our life.

This really is a labor of love.

The cultural centerpiece of some of the first Americans.

We're using food as story because food is a powerful language.

[Capri] It's the reason behind Minnesota's true origin story.

Wild rice is foundationally how our state was founded.

[Capri] And it's one of the rarest foods on the planet.

[Andrew] It's probably the most treasured food that I have in my cupboard.

[Capri] I'm Capri Cafaro and I'm on a mission to uncover the incredible stories of the foods we grow... ...harvest, create... ...and celebrate.

Beautiful, amazing meal.

So, I'm traveling America's backroads to learn our cherished food traditions from those who make them possible... Look at that.

...and are helping keep them alive.

There is so much more to learn.

[man] It's just a tradition here in this area.

[woman] Mmm hmm.

[Capri] On America the Bountiful.

[announcer] America's farmers have nourished us for generations, but today they face unprecedented challenges.

American Farmland Trust works with farmers to help save the land that sustains us.

Together we can work to keep America bountiful.

[Capri] It's hard to find a food more sacred to a place than true wild rice.

Grown by Mother Nature on the lake waters of northern Minnesota and harvested by the Anishinaabe, a broad group of indigenous peoples descending from the regions around the Great Lakes.

Manoomin, the Ojibwe word for wild rice, meaning "the good berry" grows naturally through the Great Lakes region and part of Canada.

I could make a pass and loop around from this little beaver house.

[Capri] Husband and wife, Jeff Harper and Michelle Marion, and their family have wild rice harvesting and processing traditions embedded deep in their ancestral DNA.

For Ojibwe for Anishinaabe people, wild rice is our life.

For us, that's part of our migration story.

And Anishinaabe people coming from the east and making our way to where the food grows on water.

[Capri] The Anishinaabe originated in the northeast and migrated westward in an effort to maintain their traditional ways in light of the arrival of European settlers.

Some hold that an elder had a vision that they must move to where the food grows on water.

With a landscape dotted with lakes, and with wild rice growing abundantly, Minnesota became home for many.

Tell me how wild rice is important in sort of the cycle of life for your community.

As it is life, it's within our ceremonies and within our lives and our families.

It's something that starts out even as the first food for children.

[Jeff] So, we eat rice all our lives long, and then at the other end of the cycle, there's always rice at our funeral feasts for those people that are passed on.

[Michelle] It connects us to all our land here and our language as well, just being out there, being in nature, and just reinforcing that good part of a good life.

You know, being out with family and it goes back to that lineage as well.

[Capri] Jeff and Michelle both cherish childhood memories and stories of their elders that they recall from the annual ricing season.

A brief window in the late summer when the rice is ready to harvest, where their families would practice sacred traditions that were passed through many generations.

I think it probably becomes more special because it only happens once a year, and you do have that ability to connect to each other and to connect to the land.

Yeah, that's right.

[Capri] The food on the water.

What we're looking for is rice that's open, and we can tell by the color.

So, these are our knocking sticks, the bawa'iganaak, and I'm going to grab some of the rice, pull it over the boat and just brush it off.

And I'll do the same on this side in just a continual motion.

[Capri] With Jeff's four decades of pulling experience, he's propelling a canoe through the rice beds with an 18-foot hand-carved cedar pole.

So, we're going to pull in the rice and then brush.

Yes, okay.

And then pull, and then brush.

Okay.

What, 10,000 more times of that?

Yeah.

There you go.

I feel like I think I'll get the knack of it.

Like Michelle was showing you, just make sure to sweep it all the way in as much as you can.

[Capri] Left.

[Jeff] Yep and then sweep over the rice.

[Capri] And then, sweep over the rice.

You make this look so easy.

This really is a labor of love.

[Jeff] One-hundred-and-twenty years ago, the U.S. government dammed a lot of the lakes and that flooded out a lot of rice beds.

We kind of got lucky here that the rice adapted and we still have it.

And so, we're still surrounded by a lot of rice beds and pockets of rice and the little lakes and rivers.

[Capri] Are there any specific kind of a stewardship that you have with the lake or with the rice that keep it going?

[Jeff] It's mostly a hands-off type of management.

The less we do, the less nature has to adapt to our actions.

So, part of your success is working with nature, not against it.

[Jeff] Yeah, all of our success is.

Some of the things that we're brought up to understand is, it's our responsibility to be out here ricing.

Taking part in this.

The rice puts itself out here for us, to feed us and nourish us, and we have to do our part: come out and pick some and fix some up at home if we can.

We're making medicine.

Just this way of life, out here picking it, we're giving part of ourselves and that gives us the strength to do it every year.

And then we get the nourishment.

[Capri] I love that.

The act of harvest is a reciprocal relationship with the rice plants.

It helps the rice reseed itself by knocking seeds into the water before they're eaten by other creatures, particularly the small worms that thrive here.

Well, I can tell that you're very good stewards of the lands, good stewards of the rice, good stewards of the water, and that's why this rice is still here for generations to be able to nourish themselves.

[Jeff] Yeah, it takes care of us.

[Capri] The Anishinaabe people had to fight hard to protect the wild rice bounty from man-made water pollution, mining and other commercial interests.

While the range of rice has been reduced over the decades, the sacred traditions endure.

Jeff's sister Laurie Harper is the family's leader when it comes to processing the rice in a traditional manner, which is required before it's ready to be cooked and eaten.

So, we've gone through the wild rice harvesting process which is pretty laborious, but there's more to do.

Got to process it.

First step will be the parching, the second step is the jigging, and the third step is the winnowing.

Tell us about what we're doing here?

So, this is parching the rice.

What we're doing is we're popping or cracking the hull off through the heat that's burning in a hull off the rice.

[Capri] The hull is the outer casing of that good berry.

The relatively rare manoomin waiting inside.

[Laurie] So, the rice is really well protected.

-Nature knows.

-Yep.

Nature knows it's protecting the good stuff, but in order to get to the good stuff, you're going to have to go through this process.

[Laurie] All right, so the cracking you're hearing right now is the hulls burning off.

[Capri] Okay.

Part of the process is to make sure that it is drying out right?

[Laurie] Yep.

So, the next step in this is-- The jigging.

The jigging, okay.

Tell me why, first of all, we have to jig the rice.

[Jeff] Because we don't want to eat the hulls.

Even though we scorched it a little bit on the fire, it's still holding on to the kernel, and jigging it will roll the rice kernel inside of there and break up the skin a little bit more and separate it.

Do we need to make it smaller?

[Jeff] So, what you want to do is make the skin smaller.

Just keep on jigging it.

[Capri]It's cultural belief that men do the jigging, so Jeff is tapped for the job.

There are special moccasins and a mat of sacred cedar for the occasion.

The jigging is actually like, just lifting your-- lifting one foot up as you're going, turning and then setting it down, and then that foot rubs it.

This foot takes turns and-- It's like a churning.

Yeah, it pushes the skin off, and as I do it, the skins all rise to the top and the rice sinks to the bottom.

And I can test it for if I think it's almost ready or if it's ready just by reaching in and verifying.

I don't even know how to describe this.

The way that I see it is almost like a human churning.

Which is really what you're doing in order to separate out the hull.

And then you have to stop and then check it, right?

Yep.

To see if you're at the point in which you want to move on to the next step.

[Capri] Jeff, Laurie and their family take great care to honor the steep tradition throughout this entire process.

It ties us to the earth, to the lakes, to our loved ones that have left.

I mean, just like thinking about the teachings that we got through our own parents and our grandparents about this is, that's inner generational teaching-- Right.

And knowledge, right?

Right, and that's how these traditions get passed on from one generation to the other.

That's how they continue to be living traditions.

[Jeff] So, having all the grandkids out like, they get to see what they'll be doing eventually.

[Laurie] A lot of our teaching is done by showing.

Like being very active and making sure that they're around us like this.

And the importance behind it, again, is that tie to ensuring that our family sticks together and that these activities that we do together are what bring us together and what ties us and binds us together.

We're almost done with the jigging here, and we'll move on to the next step of winnowing.

[Capri] All right.

On to winnowing we go.

[Jeff] All right.

So, this is the third and final step of the processing, winnowing.

Now what?

Now we check the direction of the wind because this is the dusty part-- Okay.

--of the work.

What we do here is we'll take the basket.

-Ready?

-Yep.

[Capri] A winnowing basket handmade by Michelle from birch bark.

-And you see that.

-Yep.

Why is it important to get the dust out?

So, it's the dust, it's the broken hull off of it.

Once we get it shaken out, the rice itself will fall to the bottom.

[Capri] Right.

And that'll be the finished product.

I could already get that nutty smell that you can also taste in wild rice often.

Yeah, can I give it a shot?

Yes, please do.

You definitely cannot be afraid to get dirty.

[Laurie] Yes.

But the end product, the end results-- [Laurie] You already seeing it.

[Capri] --will be well worth it.

With these three important steps, the rice is ready to cook.

We've reached the bounty of the harvest.

[Laurie] First feast because it's a spiritual food for us, usually, we just do a plain pot of wild rice and serve it up with our other foods.

We give thanks for the season and for the bounty and we celebrate life again.

[Capri] In addition to the sacred family and ancestral traditions, the proud Anishinaabe people also view their commitment to wild rice as a societal act of defiance.

The act of defiance to show the broader community that we're still here.

We're still stewards of our own land.

We've chosen how we're going to navigate our world.

And you've been kind enough to welcome me to learn about this as well, and I appreciate that.

If the Harper family's act of defiance could be translated to restaurant form, then Owamni in downtown Minneapolis is its embodiment.

Owamni is the creation of Sean Sherman, a James Beard winning talent, who goes by the moniker, The Sioux Chef, as a Native American Sioux.

And his groundbreaking restaurant stands apart because it's the first in the nation to use only ingredients that are indigenous to North America.

The menu is just so different from many places because you engage with these indigenous ingredients introducing them to a wider audience of diners.

How does that menu reflect the true taste of North America?

Well, we focus on North American indigenous foods.

We try and prioritize purchasing our indigenous foods from indigenous producers first, locally and then nationally.

So, we're able to get all sorts of cool products in from all over the place, you know.

A lot of the majority of it comes from this region so we can really feature food to taste like where we happen to be.

For us, we've always cut out colonial ingredients.

Yeah, what does that mean?

Tell us.

We've removed things like dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar, beef, pork, chicken, just things that were introduced here and that haven't been here that long, to really showcase just like how much amazing food is out there.

[Capri] Like many Native Americans, Sean grew up with a commodity food program, government food assistance based on agricultural surplus to provide basic sustenance.

And a big motivation for him is bringing a more nutritional diet to Native communities.

And of course, that starts and ends with wild rice.

This wild rice comes from here in Minnesota and this is hand harvested, and this is a Native producer on top of that.

So, this stuff is really beautiful and we just go through so much of it.

it's so fun.

[Capri] I'm excited.

I want to know what's on this table.

We have some forage mushrooms, right?

Yeah, it's just some simple mushrooms.

The wild rice.

There's a little bit of quinoa.

Then we have some mixed maíz corn, and this will be kind of a grain bowl base.

We have a dandelion pesto that we mix with that.

I was wondering about that.

This is just a really, really simple.

So, it's just like basically a grain salad.

It smells incredible, by the way.

That dandelion pesto, I can smell it.

It's so-- It's so aromatic and so fresh.

Oh, I know it's so fresh.

You want to get some of that grain with that pesto in there.

Oh, yeah!

Oh, my god.

This is incredibly fresh.

And you can really taste each individual ingredient.

Yeah, there's just a little bit of everything because in the rice itself, we cook that with dried currant, so they can kind of puff out and just adds a sweetness to that.

Then you've got the mixed maíz corn for that little bit of texture.

And you've got the quinoa to give it a little bit of bulk and more nutritional value.

And it's all these fresh greens and the mushrooms.

We serve these with meats too.

This one is completely plant-based here, but we have braised bison, braised turkey.

Sometimes elk, things like that that we can utilize here also.

[Capri] This is wonderful.

[Sean] Try a little bit of the tea to kind of wash that down.

So, it's going to be really light, but you're going to be able to taste a little bit of that toastiness from the rice.

And I can smell the toastiness as well.

It is mild, but it is a really nice delicate flavor.

That's great.

And the fact that it's got a little bit of caffeine doesn't hurt either.

-Just a tiny touch, yeah.

-That doesn't hurt.

[Capri] I mean, you have a very explicit commitment, vision and mission here.

It's even on the back of your menu.

You talk about the importance of fair wages and decolonizing diets and obviously you are educating people one bite at a time.

What do you hope to achieve going forward with your work here as you feed people and introduce them to these new ingredients?

[Sean] Well, it just really opens up a lot of story to the treatment of indigenous peoples, the histories that we had to endure just to be here.

The absurdity of just not having Native restaurants all over the nation, you know.

We're using food as story because food is a powerful language.

And our vision is helping to develop more of these kinds of situations all over the nation, so one day as we drive across North America, you can stop at indigenous focused restaurants and really experience the amazing diversity that we have out there, and all of this really wonderful nutritional food that we have out there too.

[Capri] Well, stay committed to that goal.

And I've got one more thing for you to try, a little wild rice orientated.

What is this?

So, this is just a little bit of the wild rice sorbet and it's got some of the puffed rice on top.

-Oh, wow!

-Yeah, just take a little taste.

Now, wild rice and sorbet are not two things I would ever think would go together, but this is incredible.

Is there maple in here?

Yeah, just a little bit of maple for the sweetness and it's just super simple.

So basically, make a wild rice milk out of cooked rice and water.

Okay.

And then we add in the maple and then we just let it freeze, you know, and then a little bit of that puffed rice on top.

[Capri] And the puffed rice adds a nice little crunch.

[Jeff] Exactly.

It's so good.

I love this.

It does again have that nuttiness but that sweet with the maple.

It's like a healthy dessert, basically.

Yeah.

And that's all Minnesota.

That's all right here.

All Minnesota in a cup.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

[Capri] From Minnesota in a cup to Minnesota on a stick.

The Minnesota State Fair is renowned as the place to eat any and everything the state is known for, oftentimes on a stick.

But the great Minnesota Get Together as it's called, truly embodies the cultural and agricultural spirit and traditions of this place.

And who better to educate on these matters then the unofficial mayor of the Fair, culinary anthropologist, chef, and proud adopted Minnesotan, Andrew Zimmer.

Fairs are like my natural habitat but there is nothing like the great Minnesota Get Together, the Minnesota State Fair.

I honestly think it's the greatest single cultural event of any kind in the world.

-That's a big statement.

-I've been to a lot of them.

I'm not sure anything so represents a people's history, place, and culture and is also as much fun then with as many things to do and the whole state comes by the way.

It's not just pockets of the state.

Over the course of the ten days that it's open, the entire state will come.

Well, because people wait all year round to come and they want to eat those certain things that they can only get once a year here at the Minnesota State Fair.

And I've noticed since I've been here in Minnesota that wild rice is so important to this community, to this culture, to this state, and so I have to think that there's got to be some place to have wild rice here right.

We have a couple.

One of which, the place called Giggle's Campfire Grill.

They have a walleye wild rice cake that I want you to try.

Thanks for taking me to Giggle's.

Well sure it's, it's sort of become a more modern institution serving traditional Minnesota food items including wild game, walleye or state fish, wild rice cakes, things like that.

And it's grown into one of the biggest food booths at the State Fair.

-It's huge.

-It's really an incredible thing.

Walleye is the official state fish in Minnesota.

That's exactly right.

So, we have the state fish and we have wild rice, what else is in here?

It's a smart move.

You know bread crumbs, eggs, green and red pepper.

Oh, yeah.

The John D. Campfire.

Speaking of it, it has a little bit of smoke to it.

-Little smoky, little mustardy.

-Yes.

I love it with a squeeze of lemon.

I mean look, honoring Minnesota's two most traditional ingredients, our state fish and the foundational element of why people first came to this land of 10,000 lakes, land of many waters.

In the history of our first peoples, tribal groups were looking for food, and they came across these incredible lakes that were filled with fish and endless, what appeared to be oceans, of what we now know as wild rice.

I loved the history that you've been telling me about.

And the history of the State Fair.

It's been going on for a really long time, right?

Yeah, almost 160 years.

We have a building, the Hamlin Dining Hall, that's been serving fair goers for 125 years, they also have a wild rice item down there that I think you should try.

Well, you absolutely have to take me there.

-Let's get going.

-All right.

So, I think you're really going to like this.

Wow!

You are right.

[Andrew] Yeah.

This is food the way it's supposed to be cooked.

Well clearly.

It's an incredible experience.

And when you talk about something that merges history and Minnesota's greatest foods, our traditions, you know, here you have a Swedish meatball.

And the largest immigration wave in the early years, the foundation of our state, was from the Scandinavian countries.

This year is their 125th anniversary.

-Incredible.

-They're into their 126th year.

It's an incredible thing.

And you can see if you squint what it was like 100 years ago.

Where members of a congregation would come down, take a space, and feed people breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And this is their Swedish wild rice meatball with Lingonberry sauce.

Not only do they have-- I see there's cranberry inside.

Yes, it's exactly right.

And... Oh, wow.

Like, that tastes like home.

I don't know how else to like, describe it.

That is what it tastes like.

It tastes like home.

You can tell love and history is in every bite.

[Andrew] This is comfort food at its best.

Someone's grandmother is actually back there-- [Capri] Absolutely.

[Andrew] --making these by hand to the same recipe that they've been using forever.

They may change things that go in there, but imagine a version of the Swedish meatball was made 125 years ago when they opened.

You know, what's fascinating to me as a food anthropologist, food historian, food culture geek, Wild rice, in my opinion, our existential food here in Minnesota our favorite foods are disappearing because of the global climate crisis, and I think this is a part of that.

The true wild rice and the pleasures of it keep shrinking and diminishing.

[Capri] And while a man-made version of wild rice that's been created for commercial production is easy to find nowadays, it's not the same as true wild rice.

[Andrew] It's probably the most treasured food that I have in my cupboard, and I share it with people who really love food and it leaves them almost breathless.

It's nutty and has a deeper, richer flavor.

-It's so exquisitely nutty.

-I've noticed that.

And I think it's one of our most freshest food stuffs and yet it's missing from almost all those great lists of great global foods because it's only grown in a very small geographic area.

And you combine the laborious nature of trying to get that wild rice with the fact that there's a finite amount, and it really has become probably a wonder of the world.

I hope it never goes away.

And it's why I endorse things like this.

But as long as we can keep the love alive for this, then we have a chance.

People will fight for it to continue.

Then we have a chance, right?

That's right.

See the way that moves.

If the gravy doesn't move like that on your potatoes, did a grandmother really make it?

-I mean, obviously not.

-Not.

Obviously not.

I'm going to get in there.

-Thanks, grandma.

-Seriously.

Thanks, grandma.

Wow!

[Capri] While man-made, bioengineered food like cultivated rice, is a constant reminder of our technological capacity and relentless advancement... ...and while our planet's ecosystems continue to evolve in uncertain ways... ...there's a true harmony in preserving and reviving the simple and sacred practices that have passed through generations.

To harvest, honor, and share one of Mother Nature's rarest culinary gifts.

But why take my word for it, when you can come experience it for yourself.

America The Bountiful is waiting for you and me.

For more information visit Americathebountifulshow.com.

[announcer] America's farmers have nourished us for generations, but today they face unprecedented challenges.

American Farmland Trust works with farmers to help save the land that sustains us.

Together we can work to keep America bountiful.