It’s been centuries since the White Earth Band migrated west across North America, following an ancestral prophecy to go where “food grows on water.” One of seven Ojibwe bands in Minnesota, White Earth found that prophecy fulfilled along the many shallow clear lakes that lie in the state’s northern forests, where luminous green stalks of wild rice grow in abundance.

The lakes and the magnificent bounty of wild rice still form the spiritual foundation of a culture, economy, and way of life for the tribe, which inhabits the White Earth Reservation that was created in 1867 through a treaty the United States signed with the Mississippi Band of Chippewa Indians.

To read the full story, visit the Great lakes Now site here.