Morningstar Goodsky comes in the dock with part of the day’s harvest of wild rice. Rice Lake in the Rice Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Aitkin County, in north central Minnesota, is home to a pristine 4,500-acre body of water that provides the wild rice harvest that the Ojibwe have depended on for countless generations. The harvest is done in the fall when the rice can be easily knocked off the plant using a couple sticks.