Wild Rice Creation Story

I found a lovely film about the sacred food of the Anishinabe in Minnesota: the wild, long grain rice.



It's interesting the language that the seed companies have already implanted into our society: that they would be creating "genetically superior" rice. It astounds me that anyone, thinking about it deeply, could ever imagine that something artificially altered could be genetically 'superior' to something that has lived on earth and responded to natural conditions, altering itself and adapting, for millenia. How could that be? The Anishinabe narrator tells the story using the language that we have all begun to absorb: a concept of 'genetic superiority' that was supposed to have died with Hitler.

It was just something that stuck out and shouted at me when I watched the film. I don't want to learn the Monsantan language, thank you, because it plants in my consciousness unhealthy and altered words that have nothing to do with the real thing.

Course Description

Here is my website description for my class on Enchanted Cooking & Soul Nutrition. I am continuing to look for venues and gather courage to teach it. It is going to be great.

Once upon a time people sang to the seeds during planting and loved the roots free as the earth released them during harvest. Learn skills of intense and gentle focus in order to enhance every aspect of your life, beginning with self-nourishment. Undertaking shamanic journeys to the land spirits of our food, we will re-enchant the raw materials with their ancestral dreams as we cook and bake together. As we explore soul nutrition and the role of sacred food, we will practice the skills of singing the seeds and animative breathing as well as the art of composing the palate/palette of a meal...whose ingredients become a metaphor for the wholly-lived, delicious life.