New Museum Exhibit Explores Hunting, Fishing, and Gathering

Tom Giffey |

An Ojibwe woman harvests wild rice from a canoe in this photo from the Chippewa Valley Museum collection.
An Ojibwe woman harvests wild rice from a canoe in this photo from the Chippewa Valley Museum collection. Image: Alfred Bonanno

For many of us, the highlight of this time of year is a trip to the apple orchard or the farmers market, enjoying the cool of the autumn as we gather our fill of the good things that flourished during the summer. Whether we realize it or not, when we do this we are following a pattern that dates back countless generations in the Chippewa Valley. From the region’s earliest inhabitants through today, harvesting has been key to our communities, and an upcoming exhibit at the Chippewa Valley Museum will put this into focus. The exhibit, Harvesting Traditions, which opens Sept. 30 at the museum in Eau Claire’s Carson Park, examines hunting, fishing, and gathering practices, past and present. “Visitors to Harvesting Traditions can learn about spearing fish through lake ice, trapping muskrats in the forest, and knocking wild rice in ‘fields’ that grow on select regional lakes,” the museum said in a media release. Visitors will also have the opportunity to learn about wild food recipes and go on a scavenger hunt for harvesting artifacts in the nearby Changing Currents exhibit. A special opening event for the exhibit will be 1-4pm on Saturday, Sept. 30, and will include hands-on demonstrations on topics such as tying fishing flies, turkey calling, and creating Ojibwe birch bark baskets. The exhibit – which will be on display through September 2019 – will replace Always Beading, an exhibit about bead art that opened in 2015. Harvesting Traditions is supported in part by Xcel Energy and a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board, with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts. To learn more about the exhibit and the museum’s hours and admission fees, visit cvmuseum.com or call (715) 834-7871.