Restoring Manoomin in Brokenhead Ojibway Nation through a community-led approach: implications on food security and the local economy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Manoomin (Zizania palustris), also known as wild rice, is a culturally, spiritually, nutritionally, and ecologically important plant to the Ojibway people. Production and management of Manoomin are deeply rooted in Indigenous food system knowledge (IFSK), which was negatively affected by colonial legacies. This research asked whether Manoomin production can play a significant role in the Ojibway economy amid high food insecurity, structural barriers to traditional food access, and challenges to sustainable livelihoods. My mixed methodology research employed the need-based approach (NBA) in investigating a sustainable pathway to restoring Manoomin to Brokenhead Ojibway Nations (BON). Community members enrolled in the Kitigay pilot program, a project-based post-secondary education program, took the lead in restoring Manoomin in BON and transforming the abandoned weedy Bison Ranch farm for gardening and orchard planting. An initial 60 pounds of Manoomin was procured and planted in BON Rivers in October 2024, with community members' active participation. Later, a community café was organized in collaboration with community members. The community café’s impact resulted in the BON Chief and Council purchasing and planting an additional 2,000 pounds of Manoomin in 2023, applying IFSK. A community café, survey, and participatory action research undertaken in this study indicate that Manoomin is regarded as an essential component of the Ojibway people’s food chain, economy, and environment. Eighty-one percent of the 21 participants who completed the semi-structured survey indicated the likelihood of participating in future community-led Manoomin restoration projects. In ranked order (1 = not at all important to 5 = very important), the three most compelling reasons among ten variables for participating in the community café are transferring IFSK to the youth (90%), reviving IFSK (88%), and income and employment opportunities (86%). The Spearman’s correlation results suggest a strong positive correlation between reviving IFSK and transferring IFK to the youth (r =.67, n = 21, p < .001). A strong positive correlation exists between reviving IFSK and decolonizing IFSK (r =.57, n = 21, p < .007). The Manoomin restoration in BON presents a compelling argument for community-led participatory approaches to addressing food insecurity problems in Indigenous communities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".