The Legend of Wild Rice and Wisakichuk
by: Mike Durocher

Once upon a time Wisakichuk was walking along the shoreline when he happened upon this aquatic field of long weed-like plants, with thick berries hanging down causing the stalks to bend over. Wisakichuk took some of the long kernels from one of the plants and opened a kernel; inside was a long dark, almost black seed. He tasted it and it tasted so good he ate more. He was kind of hungry so he thought he might as well have a meal out of this unusual find.

A couple of hours later as Wisakichuk was sitting amongst his tribe he felt and noticed that his belly was rising. He kept feeling fuller, and fuller, and tighter and tighter. He felt his belly with his hands and then the other members of the community noticed his predicament and began asking whether Wisakichuk was going to have a child. They had never seen a pregnant man before so the whole community was milling around all excited. They all wanted to know who was the father since Wisakicuk had no wife, nor girlfriend so was this a scandal to happen?

This episode of Wisakichuk's belly rising became alarming because never in any of the mid-wifes' knowledge had they ever seen someone's belly rise so quickly. A couple more hours past and then Wisakichuk began to feel other sensations and he started to pass enormously loud rips of gas. The people roared as they laughed at poor Wisakichuk. Then he started to feel the awful need to run to the bushes...there was some serious business to be done.

After all was said and done, Wisakichuk noticed that the cause of all this pain and embarassment was because of all that strange seed he had ate. He told his fellow tribal members and they went to check it out. They found it to be very filling and nutritious, so they all sat down and started eating the wild rice too. So that is why today you see so many of our Aboriginal men with pot bellies. They, like Wisakichuk loved their newly found wild rice. So, when the Europeans discovered us, they thought we had beer bellies and ever since have stereotyped us as such. Little do the whitemen know how wrong they were.


Copyright 2000 - MJDurocher