This episode is the final one in our four-part series that we're calling the future of.

We've been exploring how changes the way we live, learn, work, and play may shape our health and well-being in years to come.

Thanks to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for supporting the shape our health and well-being in years to come.

Thanks to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for supporting this episode.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is committed to improving health and health equity

in the United States.

Learn more about them at RW.W.J.org.

This is 99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

Two hours west of Duluth, there is a wide shallow lake called Big Rice Lake.

Every summer, once the ice has thawed, the surface of the lake is slowly breached by tall green stalks that grow up and out of the water.

By early fall, Beggarice Lake is dotted with canoes full of people there to harvest the

grains from those plants. This is where the lake gets its name.

These tall, unassuming stems are full of a very special ingredient.

Wild rice.

In my first time I first time actually rice in.

Me and my sister took my grandma and my mother out on a lake and we were going around in circles and

they were pointing, I want to go over there. I want to go over there.

This is Evelyn Bellinger, an elder enrolled in the White Earth Band, which is the largest of the six bands that make up the Minnesota Chippewa tribe, also known as the

Adjibwe people. Evelyn has always loved going out on Big Rice Lake

to take part in the harvest.

And it's really quiet, you know, you're not going fast, but you can hear when somebody pulls that

...