For Ojibwe, sugarbush time brings tasty food, life lessons

ODANAH, Wisc. (AP) — Sugarbush time begins in the fleeting moments when winter first signals its departure, making way for spring. When the daytime temperatures rise above 40 degrees, usually about mid-March, the maple sap begins to flow.

Although one can continue to gather sap after trees begin to bud, the syrup is bitter. Sugarbush is a short, delicious season of intense work signaling that the first fruits of the earth are emerging. Fresh maple sap is highly perishable and must be cooked into syrup or sugar soon after gathering. Sugarbush time usually lasts about three weeks.

Long ago, the sap was cooked down into sugar, easier to store and lighter than syrup.

But the sugarbush is about far more than maple syrup on pancakes. As with most Ojibwe traditional ways, tapping trees in the early spring and gathering sap for syrup and sugar cakes not only provides tasty food but offers lessons for life.

Today, the business of the sugarbush, or iskigamizigan in the Ojibwe language, also has an element of Indigenous activism, Indian Country Today reported.

Ojibwe bands in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota have rights to hunt and gather on ceded lands affirmed by the Treaties of 1836, 1837 and 1842. Until the 1980s, however, after tribes sued for those rights in federal courts, both states prevented Ojibwe citizens from hunting, gathering or fishing off reservation lands. Iskigamizigan is an affirmation of treaty rights, emphasizing Ojibwe’s inherent rights to healthy sustainable subsistence foodstuffs.