Bad River Tribe’s Sugarbush Revives Culture and Community
- barbara19069
- May 28
- 2 min read
As winter drew to a close and sap began to flow, brown maple leaves emerged from a blanket of snow on the forest floor of northern Wisconsin. On a hillside above Gichigami (Lake Superior), members of the Bad River community gathered to collect one of spring’s first gifts from blue, thick plastic bags that hung from silver-barked trees.
Iskigamizigewan (sugar bush) season brought together Tribal staff and a group of volunteers to collect newly flowing sap, strengthen community ties, and continue the traditional practice of maple sugaring.
“Sugaring goes back to our treaties and our rights to harvest from these lands,” said Katie Koch, Bad River’s Food Sovereignty program coordinator. “It connects us to our culture and way of life.”
Koch is entering her third year leading the program for the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and is deeply committed to her work. With her newborn daughter bundled and secured to her chest, she’s less likely to be found behind her office desk and prefers being out on the land helping with the day-to-day, physical work of growing and gathering food.
Beyond coordinating at the sugarbush, Bad River Food Sovereignty has revitalized the tribe’s community gardens, gathered community members to share knowledge about traditional harvest and food preservation practices, and is in the process of bringing a tribal farm into production.
This season, with the assistance of Tribal youth, tribal staff, and community volunteers, her program tapped around 250 sugar maples. Throughout the spring, they collected shy of 3000 gallons of sap from the sugarbush - all of which needed to be hauled back to the community center and boiled down to syrup.
Producing syrup is a labor and energy-intensive process—every gallon of syrup starts as about 40 gallons of sap. But it also provides an opportunity to gather together, tend the wood fire, and breathe in the sweet steam.
With their boiler next to a large pile of firewood alongside the community center and a fire roaring under pans of sap, the food sovereignty program’s efforts have produced nearly 60 gallons of syrup. Every gallon ends up feeding the community.
Some will be distributed to youth volunteers, some will be taken home by staff who participated in the project, extra gallons will be used for sugar-making classes and demonstrations, and others will be allocated to tribal programs such as Head Start and the elderly center.
“This is a way we’re going to move forward on the food sovereignty path and our people need to know how to move forward with seasonal products,” said Koch. “We need to be able to take care of ourselves.”
Koch connected with IAC at last year’s Great Lake’s Regional Summit. If you’re interested in attending, networking, and learning together at a regional IAC event, subscribe to the IAC newsletter to hear about upcoming events, grant opportunities, and other resources for tribal producers and tribal agriculture programs.
