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In: Amy Carrozzino-Lyon, Little Manitowoc River, manoomin, Menominee Indian High School, Titus Seilheimer, Two Rivers, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, wild rice in Green Bay, wild rice restoration, Woodland Dunes Nature Center

A wild rice stand on the Peshtigo River. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

The calendar has flipped to 2024. Our staff members are already tackling new projects. Before they move too deeply into the new year, however, some staff members took a moment to retain the glow of their favorite 2023 project. Titus Seilheimer, fisheries outreach specialist, shared his thoughts.

Call it manoomin (the “good berry”). Call it wild rice. Call it Zizania. Whatever you call it, it is a great plant species! My favorite group of projects from 2023 revolves around wild rice restoration along the west shore of Green Bay and in several rivers in Manitowoc County.

Hundreds of years ago, wild rice was abundant in the Great Lakes region, from what is now Milwaukee Harbor to all over Green Bay. Development and settlement led to declines in habitat and water quality, and associated declines in wild rice. Wild rice is an important staple for the Indigenous people of the region, with the Menominee named for it, “People of the Wild Rice.”

Titus Seilheimer (far side) and Amy Carrozzino-Lyon (left) and her crew use a seine net to capture fish for counting in a Green Bay wetlands near Marinette. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

For the second year, I have worked with Amy Carrozzino-Lyon, a professor at UW Green Bay. Amy leads the wild rice restoration project in Green Bay. We have been looking at fish use and fish assemblage in locations with and without wild rice in Green Bay coastal marshes. We had a great team this summer of college students (Sea Grant summer outreach scholars), high school students (Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin funding through UW-Green Bay) and colleagues. We set nets and pulled seines. We waited out a storm in the back of the truck and had some great times on the water.

As the weather cooled, we also planned for seeding wild rice, which is an annual plant. Although the seeds are ripe and harvested in late August to early September, seeding success is better later in the season. This keeps hungry migratory waterfowl and other species from chowing down on all the seed. We stored the rice seed underwater until late October to early November.

I helped the UW-Green Bay team with educational seeding events with the Great Lakes Explorers and the Menominee Indian High School. I also planned seeding in various ponds and habitats at Woodland Dunes Nature Center in Two Rivers. We seeded about an acre on a snowy day and the team at Woodland Dunes seeded another three acres in the West Twin River on a better weather day. We also seeded an acre of marsh in the Little Manitowoc River.

It was a great year for wild rice projects for the Manitowoc Field Office! Now, the long winter-wait to see how much germinates in the spring.

 

The post Tossing seeds and measuring fishes first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

Original Article

Blog | Wisconsin Sea Grant

Blog | Wisconsin Sea Grant

https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/blog/tossing-seeds-and-measuring-fishes/

Titus Seilheimer

On:
In: Chief Lamotte, Christine Fossen-Rades, Cofrin Center for Biodiversity, David Overstreet, Green Bay, Margaret Ellis, Menominee Indian High School, Point au Sable, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Wequiock Creek Natural Area, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

By Margaret Ellis – Yotsi’nahkwa’talihahte (Wild Rose), Oneida Nation
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay First Nations Graduate Assistant, Wisconsin Sea Grant

Wequiock Creek Natural Area is one of six places managed by the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay (UWGB). Other areas include the Cofrin Memorial Arboretum and Point au Sable.

In the early stages of the management and restoration of the Wequiock Creek Natural Area, David Overstreet was hired to work with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to identify interested parties to the land and to conduct an archaeological dig. Overstreet is a consulting archaeologist for the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and has been doing cultural digs such as this one for many years. The area is the original homeland to many First Nations: Menominee Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, Ho-Chunk Nation, Potowatomi and Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. At this point, UWGB knew it had to bring the Indigenous voice back to the lands to ensure any restoration efforts incorporated its original inhabitants.

Consulting Archaeologist David Overstreet, works with Menominee youths on Point au Sable in Green Bay. Image credit: Margaret Ellis

One such effort to bring the voice back is to connect Indigenous youth to the area. Overstreet and Bobbie Webster, the natural areas ecologist from the UWGB Cofrin Center for Biodiversity, hosted an archeological dig at Point au Sable this spring. The Point au Sable area is an important site to the Menominee Nation as it is the ancestral and ceded territories of the Menominee Nation. There are references in surveyor notes from early 1800 to Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi and others.

Point au Sable was always a popular spot. We also know Chief Lamotte had a residence at Bay Settlement when he signed the Menominee Treaty of 1831. The goal of the dig was to find any artifacts that may be from Menominee ancestors so they can be analyzed and protected from any further restoration efforts and movement of lands. The dig was also a means of connecting Menominee youth with their original homelands and historical items.

This was the second year that Overstreet organized the dig with Menominee Indian High School students at the tip of Point au Sable, about a mile walk out into the bay of Green Bay. The students were led by Christine Fossen-Rades, a science educator at the Menominee Indian High School. After a quick visit to Wequiock Falls, the students met at Point au Sable.

Overstreet and his son, Ryan, marked off archaeological sites prior to the dig so that once everyone arrived, the students could just grab their shovels and sifters and trek the mile to the dig site. They were asked to dig holes to a certain depth or until they hit darker soil. They then used shaker boxes made of screen mesh to sift the soil and sand. The items they were looking for included important artifacts such as cracked rocks, bones, coal and any other objects that may have come from the original inhabitants.  Overstreet educated them in the process of bagging items of interest and labeling them so he could bring them to his lab for analysis. The Menominee youth and Tribe are a big part of this process and benefit from any research and lab results.

Menominee Indian High School students helped uncover the past on Point au Sable in Green Bay. Image credit: Margaret Ellis.

My favorite part about this activity was seeing the elements of past, present and future — Menominee students working on lands that belonged to their ancestors in an effort to support the preservation of their culture while using modern-day science. The activity represented an Indigenous worldview of continuity and the circular nature of our being. Experiencing this connection to the past felt like coming full circle and I’m glad to have been involved in it.

This dig is part of an ongoing effort to bring Indigenous voices and presence to UWGB natural areas. As an Indigenous person and UWGB student, I appreciate the movement toward a more inclusive as authentic relationship between UWGB, its natural areas, and the Indigenous Nations that once called them home.

The post Reconnecting Menominee students with their roots in the bay of Green Bay first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

Original Article

Blog | Wisconsin Sea Grant

Blog | Wisconsin Sea Grant

https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/blog/reconnecting-menominee-students-with-their-roots-in-the-bay-of-green-bay/

Marie Zhuikov