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Setting the Scene
It is late summer. Makwa accompanies grandmother and three aunts to harvest manoomin — wild rice — from the lake. She learns that the Anishinaabe calendar is not based on the Gregorian months but on the moon and the land's own cycles. Each moon has a name that says what the earth is doing right now.
1Setting Out in Canoes
Two canoes slip out onto the misty water before sunrise. Grandmother names the month: Manoominike-giizis
🔊 = synthesized speech · Dictionary = recorded native speaker
(cleaning — October). Each name is a teaching about that time.
4The Seasonal Round
Grandmother draws the seasonal round in the air: spring sugar bush, summer fishing and gathering, fall ricing and hunting, winter storytelling and ceremony. Gaa-tebisemagak.
🔊 = synthesized speech · Dictionary = recorded native speaker
. This is not a grammatical technicality. It means the wild rice has a spirit, a will, a relationship with the Anishinaabe people that goes back further than memory.
7The Harvest Ceremony
As the canoes fill with grain, an elder begins a song. Miigwech, manoomin.