Our second day at White Earth began splendidly. It began with pancakes. Big ones, with condiments beyond any reasonable scope: Maple butter, maple syrup, and chokecherry jam all straight from the reservation, apple butter, raw honey, coconut flakes, and carob chips. How could anything go wrong after that (despite it being the Ides of March)? Luckily, nothing (well, not TOO much) did.
First, all five of us assisted in the bagging of food for the Mino-Miijim project (the project that delivers food to diabetic Natives on the reservation, which Dana and Emily helped with yesterday). Then, we split up again: Dave and Chris went with Margaret this time to deliver the freshly bagged food, and Ryan, Dana, and Emily went out to the WELRP sugarbush.
Chris and I (Dave) drove down dozens upon dozens of snow covered miles with our elder guide. Margaret just turned 87 two days ago and she works as hard as us people one fourth of her age. Margaret knew exactly when to start slowing down for each driveway and what kind of car to be looking for the in the driveway of the 46 different people to whom we delivered canvas bags of food: organic buffalo meat, Muskrat Coffee (A company literally run from Winona's back porch), two kinds of wild rice, hominy corn (that WELRP bartered for with a WI tribe).
Margaret has spent 2 months surveying the entire reservation in order to be able to make monthly deliveries of health food. She explained that many people live on Welfare or Social Security and that money is often gone by the middle of the month.
At one woman's house we delivery-boys were plied with fresh peanut butter cookies. Like many others, this woman decided to come out and see Margaret on this clear sunny day, and she brought along a bag of cookies "for the road." We climbed back into the blue delivery van and the woman began chatting with Margaret about how tough the winter had been, her little garden out back, and their aches and pains. I felt no sense of hurry leaning back in the driver's seat, munching on chewy cookies while old friends caught up with each other on a sunny winter day.
We drove home on a snow-covered back road and startled two bald eagles out of their trees, as well as a gorgeous owl that slid silently to a dead birch tree and watched our van pass. All of the people we delivered to had been very friendly once they realized we were volunteering for WELRP and more importantly, taking directions from Margaret. She has long since stopped going into the houses because everybody loves to talk to her and her rounds would never get finished. We pulled into the WELRP headquarters physically tired and impressed by the constant cheerfulness of this wonderful white haired woman.
Meanwhile, in the sugarbush, we began the day hauling and throwing a small pile of firewood onto a larger pile so that it was more conveniently placed for the upcoming intensive process of evaporating the sap from more than 4,000 sugar maple trees. It was a beautiful morning, the sun was shining in a cloudless blue sky, and the air was crisp and refreshing. We joined the crew for lunch, accompanied by two energetic dogs who succeeded in looking cute enough to convince most of us to give them scraps of our food.
My (Emily's) personal dreams came true after lunch. The crew uses a team of two black Percheron draft horses, named Rosebud and Aanwag (which means "crow" in Ojibwe) to navigate the WELRP sugarbush. The team drags people to tap the trees in mid-March, and, later in the season, hauls wagons loaded with dozens of gallons of fresh maple sap back to the workhouse for on-site evaporation. After lunch, the three of us hopped on the back of a sleigh hooked up the two horses. We held on tight and went gliding off into the birch and maple forest, flying at high speeds on the declines, trotting slowly on the inclines, and holding on for dear life on the sharp turns, which the horses handled with natural ease. It was better than Christmas. Our job was to fix sap bags that had fallen off of their taps.
We stopped for a little while to help tap more trees, and were joined by Winona Laduke and one of her sons, Ajuawak, who were filming a short film on the maple harvest for their website (www.welrp.org). We spoke with her briefly before jumping back on the sleigh and riding off into the wilderness—or back to the base to insulate and clean a cabin facility. After "helping," aka "watching" the crew split firewood, we headed back to the WERLP heaquarters to meet up with Dave and Chris.
Once we were home, we began preparing for the proposed 6:00 arrival of Winona for dinner. Delicious East Indian food takes a while to cook, so at 7:55 we were finally ready, which coincided perfectly with the late arrival of Sarah and Jennifer, who were stuck at work with a surprise. The wild rice campaign (www.savewildrice.com) is pushing now for legislation to ban genetically modified wild rice in all of Minnesota. Apparently, the senate committee hearing on the legislation was scheduled for tomorrow without their knowledge, and the only people invited to testify were the biologists at the University of Minnesota who are mapping the wild rice genome, indicative of eventual modification. When Winona arrived a few minutes later with Ajuawak and another of her sons, Gwekaanimad, they discussed strategies for handling this complication.
Then, Winona turned to us, and spoke about WELRP and general organizing skills. The main motto that the organization follows is "You cannot control your destiny if you do not control your land." Their strategy is "organization by example," which they strive to fulfill by building indigenous leadership for flexible, working programs such as the maple syrup project, Ojibwe language programs, alternative energy projects, and more. Winona left us with time-tested advice for organization: don't burn all your bridges; look at organizing as a long term process, like gardening; don‚t get dogmatic: flexibility is key; and always, with the possible exception of exxonmobile, treat your enemies with respect. We presented her with a gift for her inspiration, hard work, and energy: a copy of Dan O‚Brien‚s novel, Buffalo for the Broken Heart, a work by a recent visiting professor, buffalo rancher, and writer about his transition from cattle ranching to buffalo ranching at this South Dakota ranch.
Winona and her sons left, and we settled in to watch a 20-minute documentary about the wild rice situation, featuring many interviews, vivid images of rice harvesting, and stunning native art by a local man, Rabbet Strickland (www.galleryatitlan.com). With full stomachs and minds energized for political action, we slept deep once again.
