Capturing the Manoomin Process for Canadian Geographic and Canadian Agricultural Museum

Manoomin is the Anishinaabemowin word for the aquatic plant Zizania palustris, known as wild rice. The Anishinaabeg recognize that Manoomin lives in kinship with people, animals, and waterways — that is, with every living entity on the land.

I had the pleasure of working with photographer and filmmaker Shelby Lisk with the cinematography portion, capturing the process of harvesting and processing manoomin. 

Here you can view Shelby’s article for Canadian Geographic:

And the short video Canadian Geographic edited together with the footage we captured on one shoot:

In addition to the Canadian Geographic piece, Shelby has done some incredible work with the Canadian Agricultural Museum, producing an exhibit about manoomin, which is now on display there, and which includes the film that Shelby directed which I did some shooting and editing for along with Shelby:

It has been such a pleasure and honour to play a small part helping Shelby capture these stories. 

—Rob Viscardis