“We see ourselves not as an owner of wild rice but a symbiotic partner and a parallel entity from the Creator,” says Frank Bibeau, a lawyer from the Anishinaabe indigenous group in the United States and Canada. Harvesters use flailing sticks to beat the wild rice — or manoomin, by its Anishinaabe name — and release grain into the air. “A good portion of the rice gets sent out in all directions to reseed the rice. Maybe half of it or a little more falls into the canoe for food,” Bibeau explains. “So we are part of the natural reseeding...