09/03/2026
It's the first-ever Wild Rice Week! Here's how one of our Indigenous scientists is using STEM to care for the rice 🌱
This week, Wisconsin is recognizing its first Wild Rice Week, highlighting the importance of protecting manoomin and the Indigenous communities who have stewarded it for generations.
Manoomin — one of the few grains indigenous to North America — is sacred to the Ojibwe. Yet in recent decades, wild rice beds across Ojibwe homelands have faced growing challenges, from changing water levels and climate patterns to pollution and habitat degradation.
STEM can play an important role in understanding and responding to those changes.
That’s where Josiah Hester, PhD, a Native Hawaiian scientist and AISES 2021 Most Promising Scientist, comes in. Through his Ka Moamoa Lab, Hester and his collaborators are using accessible, low-cost sensor technology to collect data on conditions affecting wild rice beds — including water temperature and depth, air temperature and humidity.
The goal isn’t to replace Indigenous knowledge with technology. It’s to bring knowledge systems together.
As Hester explains, the data can complement Indigenous knowledge and Western science, providing information that communities can use to make decisions and inform policy.
From harvesting traditions to sensors in the water, this work demonstrates what’s possible when Indigenous knowledge and STEM work together to care for the future.
Learn more about Dr. Hester’s work and discover how Indigenous innovation is helping address challenges facing communities and ecosystems at https://aises.org/profile/josiah-hester/
AISES Member Dr. Josiah Hester (Native Hawaiian) shows how low-cost tech combined with Indigenous innovation yields climate solutions.
