“Genocide is complicated.” So begins Black Duck Wild Rice: The Resurgence of Indigenous Food Sovereignty within the Kawartha Lakes Region. This hard-hitting video lays out the challenges and possibilities of a manoomin revival as described by Black Duck Wild Rice founder James Whetung.

Black Duck Wild Rice, located in Curve Lake First Nation is a social enterprise involved with seeding, harvesting, processing and educating about manoomin or wild rice—a traditional food of the Nishnaabe people. Black Duck Wild Rice is enacting their Indigenous rights and is working to restore Indigenous food sovereignty for their community and within their traditional territory. These steps are taken as an antidote to the impacts of settler colonialism that the Mississauga Anishinaabeg have and continue to face daily in cottage country across the Kawartha Lakes Region, the Trent Severn waterway, and particularly in contested spaces such as Pigeon Lake. The resurgence of manoomin is an important step in the process of the reconciliation—and reconciliaction!
About the Social Economy of Food Video Series
The Social Economy of Food Video Series showcases local leaders that are using food to improve their communities by enhancing the local and social economies. Watch the complete series here.
Other videos in the series:
- The Social Economy of Food Video Series- Introduction
- Supporting Seed Saving and Farmers in Atlantic Canada
- Community Financing is Cultivating Local Food: FarmWorks shows the way
- Durham Integrated Growers “DIG” Community Gardens and All Forms of Urban Agriculture
- Nourishing Communities: Hidden Harvest Ottawa has big dreams for a greener Ottawa. What are yours?
- Cloverbelt Local Food Co-op
- Aroland Youth Blueberry Initiative
- Willow Springs Creative Centre
- Nipigon Blueberry Blast Festival