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00:00The saddle is the singular symbol of the whole myth of the cowboy.
00:06We are all hardwired to do things with our hands.
00:10The work of our hands is informing the work of our mind.
00:15It's really rewarding that I get to take part in something that is, like, quintessentially Texas,
00:19which is making cowboy boots.
00:21I'm thinking about this as if this pair of boots is going to be around for the next hundred years.
00:25I'm going to take kind of as much time as I need to to make the best boots that I'm excited about.
00:32Here at the Institute of American Indian Arts, we offer degrees in contemporary Indigenous arts,
00:38and that's unique to the world.
00:43It is something amazing to be around other Indigenous artists,
00:47to be able to speak art and breathe art with them.
00:50Doing Hawaiian feather work, I started understanding the ingenuity and the craftsmanship of our ancestors.
01:01In the 70s, there was no teaching the Native Hawaiian language and culture.
01:08But there was a movement that started called the Hawaiian Renaissance.
01:11And there was this idea of building a traditional voyage in Canada.
01:16That became the flashlight that helped our people get out of the dark of the storm.
01:20Park of the storm.
01:50I was 19 years of age when I first made my entry into the world of horses and mules.
02:09There is nothing like experiencing that sagebrush sea, as it were, on the back of a horse.
02:16And it's all those things that we consider the spirit of the cowboy, that freedom, independence
02:24and I'm kind of making my own way in this world.
02:28That's all part and parcel of that experience.
02:33The saddle is the one singular symbol of the whole myth of the cowboy.
02:45It's a tool, but it's also an enormous cultural symbol.
02:56Kerry Schwartz is the top of the game of saddle making.
03:00Like everybody, he started off making saddles for working cowboys, but he is very much an
03:05artist.
03:07He has helped to elevate the cowboy arts to collector level.
03:14The cowboy arts originally were just the equipment they need to ride a horse and to work on a
03:19horse.
03:20They were miles from nowhere and didn't have stores to go to and replace their broken
03:27ropes and horse tack.
03:27So they had to make them.
03:29And if you have to make your own saddle, you might as well make a pretty one.
03:36I chose saddles because it represented the supreme challenge.
03:46All of the things to understand about leather from function to the artistry are represented
03:52in the saddle making trade.
04:05Leather engages pretty much all of your senses.
04:08I just love the aesthetics of it, the feel of it, the versatility of it, the smell of it.
04:14It's just intoxicating for me.
04:20Most of our saddle leather is from Herman Oak Tannery in St. Louis, a family business since
04:26the 1880s.
04:28What they've used for many years is an extract of bark from the mimosa and cabracha trees,
04:38and it secretes tannins.
04:40Those tannins are what preserve the leather.
04:47The structure of a saddle consists of a saddle tree.
04:50It's a framework that is internal in the saddle.
04:55I source my saddle trees from a one-man shop in New Zealand.
05:01So it starts out with that.
05:06What we call the ground seat is the layers of leather that are sculpted onto the saddle
05:13tree where the person actually sits.
05:19If you can combine a good quality saddle tree, a good quality rigging, what actually holds
05:27the saddle on the horse, and a ground seat.
05:32If you have those three elements, you've got a usable saddle.
05:36Over after here is smooth transitions.
05:41So we want this element to blend smoothly into this shape right here.
05:51I've got what we call a chase pattern splitter, and it makes thick leather thinner.
06:01Leather gauge.
06:06The saddle making, like any other craftsmanship, is sequential.
06:11What we're doing now is setting the stage for the next step.
06:15Now this creates a tunnel for those stirrup leathers.
06:30I'm here.
06:31I just keep layering pieces, sculpting.
06:35I want to make it into a shape that is conducive to the comfort of the rider.
06:41Roy has been my companion now for about 20 years.
06:55We do ask certain things of the horse.
07:00There has to be a respect relationship.
07:03If you don't have that, you're asking for trouble.
07:09They're looking for comfort or safety.
07:12And if you can give that to them, then you have a foundation where you can work together.
07:18In our trade, we hold very dear the handmade quality of what we do.
07:38The cowboy world very much subscribes to that hand-built view.
07:47We are all hardwired to do things with our hands.
07:52And that's how we learned as children.
07:55We just did it and failed over and over and over again.
07:59And of course, as adults, we want to short-circuit the failure part of it as best we can.
08:04It's literally learning by doing, and the work of our hands is informing the work of our mind.
08:10I've studied the function of a saddle till I'm blue in the face, but the artistry part of it I've invested a lot in.
08:25With floral carving, we start with a swivel knife.
08:32And then we take a series of tools that make different impressions and textures in the leather.
08:40What we're trying to do is to manipulate light and dark and come out with a three-dimensional quality to create a saddle decorated in ways that can enhance people's lives.
08:59Back in 1998, the seed was planted for the group that would become the Traditional Cowboy Arts Association.
09:14We exhibit every year at the National Cowboy Museum.
09:20The work is within four disciplines, rawhide braiders and silversmiths, fit and spur makers, saddle makers.
09:33Our organization gives out two fellowships a year where up-and-coming makers can come and spend time with members.
09:45And this is how we preserve and promote these cowboy trades.
09:50Craftsmanship comes down to, I think, a pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty.
10:15Something that people can hang on to and find fulfillment and enrichment.
10:29Truth, goodness and beauty.
10:32It's really what I'm trying to do today.
10:45The central focus of the campus here at the Institute of American Indian Arts is their dance circle.
10:53The four cardinal directions, solstice and equinox are marked.
10:58Then the campus buildings radiate out from that.
11:02If you look out to the east, you can see all the way to the sunrise.
11:07That's important. That's how we start our day and that's when we have the most energy.
11:11And I get a sense of the sacredness of the campus.
11:17This is actually an international school.
11:20We are different nations.
11:22We are not all Native American.
11:24We are Kiowa, Comanche, Seminole, Chumash.
11:30We speak different languages.
11:32Our spirituality is different.
11:34We are different Native nations.
11:36The school considers background and considers cultural identity and considers postcolonial stress disorder when it comes to students and artistic expressions.
11:48The college attracts Indigenous students from across the country and Canada as well.
11:55It's important that students have an opportunity to really hone their creativity from all of their different communities and cultures.
12:07It was hard at first to do the cast for the metal cast for the bolo because it was too thin and we didn't have the right size box to do the cast.
12:17Native people have been making things and adorning ourselves since the beginning of time.
12:26Adorning every object in our life.
12:28Everything is imbued with imagery and story and connections to our surroundings to each other.
12:34And that is the very core of what craft is.
12:37And just about every student who comes in here already has that knowledge because they've grown up in an Indian family.
12:47I came to IAI with the knowledge of my own tribe's really rich silversmithing history.
12:54But the techniques that I learned at the school were more contemporary techniques.
12:59Basic jewelry skills, casting and different types of fabricating.
13:04You can't build a house without a foundation, right?
13:10I knew I just wanted to become an artist. I wanted to explore every little thing.
13:16I'm very much a jack of all trades. So when I came to IAI, you know, put all my effort into it.
13:25My exhibition is about like ancestral teachings that come from our grandparents, our great grandparents.
13:32These are stars that they offer guidance to my people.
13:36They show us when we have our ceremonies, what time of year it is, what season we're in.
13:42They guide us.
13:44Then you look in the portal, you see yourself in the stars.
13:48It is something amazing to be around other Indigenous artists, to be able to speak art and breathe art with them.
13:56We can make art and use iconography from our tribes or just different values that we put into our work that is just understood.
14:08That's a value, I think, to have Indigenous voices there in terms of the faculty and staff and other students who understand that Indigenous perspective.
14:19Those are guiding principles from the original founders of this institution.
14:24IAIA was founded in 1962 and we started as a BIA school, the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
14:34Of course, the purpose of most BIA schools was to assimilate the Indigenous students, but here it was different.
14:43It was Lloyd Keeva New's vision and philosophy that's the foundation for the programming here.
14:50Students brought their traditions and histories and cultures to us, and then they were able to innovate with their creative expression beyond the boundaries of traditional Indigenous art.
15:02So as a result, we became the birthplace of contemporary Indigenous art.
15:07Being here really opened my eyes to what art could be.
15:15I was able to see that there's actually all sorts of mediums and styles, and geometric abstraction is something I was really drawn to.
15:23My current studio practice is ledger drawing.
15:28With ledger drawing, our foundation to draw on is antique ledger accounting sheets from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.
15:41Our traditional ledger art is very figurative, it's very representational.
15:46There are a lot of people, horses, ceremonial scenes.
15:51I grew up seeing my father work.
15:56He does traditional ledger art, so that's why it's important to me.
16:00It's because of my family, it's because it's a way of recording our history.
16:05A lot of the geometric forms I'm using are directly influenced by Blackfoot Painted Lodges.
16:11We had a lot of geometric symbols symbolizing mountains, sun, moon.
16:15So I'm continuing these geometric forms that have been here in North America for thousands of years, but in a modern way.
16:25What you see here is one step in the process of Chilkat weaving.
16:35Taking the guard hairs of the John Woo, the Alaska mountain goat, and then processing it down into the point where one can spin with it.
16:43The John Woo comes from the top of the mountain.
16:47And I really, in my own personal practice, view it as being this sort of spiritual being.
16:52And so being able to work with it in this regard is, I think, just a huge honor for myself.
16:58Just to process it, to, you know, kind of have good intention when you're working with it.
17:03It's just highly important.
17:07Chilkat weaving is a way to tell a story, a way of honoring tradition, clan histories, a way of connecting ourselves to the land that we're from.
17:17Connections like that really kind of keep the momentum going and the inspiration.
17:29IAIA really is a hub of creativity that really is unfettered.
17:34As a professional metalsmith who has been successful with my career, I had a pretty robust skill set.
17:41But being exposed to all these different mediums like printmaking, jewelry, sculpture, photography, this school has really enabled that exploration of different disciplines.
17:55And I'd like to say the medium finds you.
17:58I ended up having an emphasis in ceramics, which is really fascinating considering the pueblo that I come from, we are known as potters.
18:08We're not known as jewelers.
18:10That just kind of came out and there was a connectedness that's there.
18:17I think it's just kind of inherent within the native culture that the skill set and the talent is in the arts.
18:22And so the craft or the art is passed on from one generation to the next and it becomes part of who they are.
18:32It's important for me to pass on to my students to be proud of who you are and know your cultural ways and use that to create.
18:44There's a community here at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the commencement ceremony, that's where it's the most beautiful.
18:51We offer degrees in contemporary indigenous arts and cultures and that's unique to the world.
19:00The student represents their tribal identity.
19:06They become ambassadors of their tribe.
19:09You're not just artists or writers or filmmakers, you are cultural stewards.
19:14Thank you all so much.
19:15Congratulations.
19:16And be fierce.
19:22When they go back to their cultural communities, they carry on the legacy of what IAIA has taught them.
19:29What we do as native people, those words that we use for what we do, we're makers.
19:45Being with the community of other native peers, all learning and experiencing this, making such beautiful work, so inspired and just that interconnectivity that we have.
19:55That's all we have as human beings.
20:00IAIA is a place that is in between that contemporary art world and rooted in traditional values and traditional work.
20:08And it's a way for us as native people from all different walks of life, from the city and from the res and from just down the street and from all different ways of seeing the world.
20:18There's that underlying core of nativeness that pulls us together.
20:25As with any community, you give but you also receive so much inspiration and excitement about what's possible.
20:33The more that the native arts community can collaborate and communicate and address issues that are present in our world, in our life, the better, right?
20:43I love Texas.
20:56It is all about the wild frontier and all about opportunity.
21:13Austin is a great place to live.
21:17It's got great food, great music.
21:20It's an incredible spot to be an artist.
21:23There are folks over here on the east side doing everything from painting and illustration to ceramics to leather work.
21:30It's really rewarding that I get to take part in something that is like quintessentially Texas, which is making cowboy boots.
21:38Cowboy boots have always been an expression of personal style.
21:57Folks for a long time have made cowboy boots with traditional imagery, whether it was like top stitching or flowers, cactus, things like that.
22:04I wanted to make cowboy boots, but I wanted to draw and I wanted to take things that you might find in the west, whether it's palm trees from California or, you know, scenes from National Park.
22:15Do a little bit of storytelling, something that allows me to put my own spin on it.
22:21I did a pair that have an image of Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park in West Texas.
22:28You know, you have like a pretty peaceful scene on the front, right?
22:33We have your good luck horseshoe.
22:34It's like a beautiful blue sky, sunny day.
22:37And then we've got a prickly pear cactus.
22:40We've got an armadillo hanging out here in the foreground.
22:43We've got the river flowing right there.
22:45And then we turn it around and things have changed a little bit.
22:49Like our UFO that was up here kind of hiding has come down, taking the armadillo for a spin.
22:57But he looks pretty happy about it, honestly.
23:00And the prickly pear cactus have turned into magic mushrooms.
23:03I am making just a few pairs of incredible quality, creative boots a year.
23:15A basic pair for me takes about 150 hours.
23:19If it's a complicated pair and has a lot of inlay, it may take me 250 hours to make the actual boots.
23:27This is all techniques that have been passed down or slightly modified by one person
23:31and then passed down to an apprentice.
23:34It takes a lot of years of learning how to do it before you can do it really well.
23:45I have one customer named Blake.
23:46I made him appear a couple of years ago.
23:48I love the way that he interacts with his boots.
23:54There are certain timeless things, a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots.
23:58They fit the mold throughout the decades.
24:02So when I saw Graham's boots, I was like, man, this guy's got the style for sure.
24:07OK, so we're thinking about making another pair.
24:10You've been wearing these for a while.
24:11Is there anything that you would change?
24:13Like anything that was feeling a little funky or tight?
24:15Anything like that?
24:17No, honestly.
24:19No, they've been flawless.
24:21It's got so much good patina on it.
24:23Yeah.
24:24They have good scuffs and scrapes and whatnot.
24:27There is a soft spot in my heart for people who are going to wear them and, like, wear them out.
24:33I've worn them to weddings.
24:34I've worn them to dances.
24:35I've worn them to camping.
24:36I've worn them on my motorcycle, on trips.
24:38I've worn them in the garage.
24:40And, yeah, I will wear them for everything.
24:43Literally.
24:45Literally.
24:47You get tired of messing with feet?
24:50Sometimes.
24:52I think about feet a lot.
24:54OK, go ahead.
24:55Fitting someone's foot is the biggest challenge of this entire process.
24:59Because a great fitting pair of cowboy boots ought to feel kind of like nothing.
25:03Like, there should be, like, a second skin on your foot.
25:07All right, lift that one up.
25:08I measure their feet.
25:09And I use that to build what we call a last for them.
25:12All right.
25:13So this is somebody's last that I'm working on right now.
25:17So I'll build up the last where it needs to be larger.
25:20I'll shrink it down in other areas if they need a little bit more support on the bottom.
25:24And once that done is done, I'll move on to making their patterns.
25:29So I'll take something like this, these paper patterns,
25:32and I'll use this to actually cut the pieces out of the leather.
25:36I've got, like, the front panel, which is comprised of, like, the tops, the vamps,
25:40which is the foot portion of the cowboy boot.
25:43So, essentially, I make cowboy boots in two pieces.
25:46And then I take them and I do what's called side seaming,
25:48which is just joining them to make the entire boot.
25:54This is a secret special stretching solution.
25:57It's just water.
25:59I really like to figure out a piece of artwork that I'm going to put on top of a cowboy boot.
26:07But I also love the mechanical aspect of it and kind of the nuts and bolts of the construction part of the boot.
26:13My family's been here in Texas for a long time.
26:24I grew up crafting and sewing and things like that.
26:27My grandmother, Faye, she is a quilter.
26:30I think she's made about 400 quilts and she's in her 90s now.
26:34So I'd be at her house and she'd be piecing a quilt and I'd help her, you know,
26:38I don't know, start putting the batting on or maybe piecing some squares and working on, like, a little tiny quilt.
26:45She'd let me loose on the sewing machine so I'd be comfortable on that.
26:49I don't think that I would be doing this without her.
26:56All of the inlay that I do is the same principle.
26:59It's just like piecing a quilt.
27:01I'm building up the scene with a bunch of different colored or textured pieces of leather
27:06to get the bigger image that I want.
27:16So this is how to make inlay.
27:18I drew this up in Illustrator and cemented the pattern on these.
27:23I'll cut out the different pieces of this and then using, like, different colors of leather,
27:28I'll fill in different shapes and then sew it all together.
27:32I source leather from all over the world, from respectable tanneries.
27:41My favorites are definitely kangaroo and calf.
27:45Calf is the primary leather of pretty much any footwear in the entire world.
27:50Kangaroo is a beautiful leather.
27:53And for inlay, it's a dream because it's strong, but it doesn't have a lot of thickness to it like calf.
28:03This is the first step.
28:05Essentially, it's like I have a main body, which is this kind of chocolate kip calf right here.
28:10And then I have one, two, three, four, five other pieces of leather.
28:15I have two different colors that make up the actual eye itself.
28:18And then for the iris and the pupil, two different pieces of kangaroo, like a chocolate brown and a black.
28:24So, this is the first time that I had made myself a pair of, like, inlayed boots.
28:29They were made with a suede pig for the vamps.
28:32It's like, it's very durable, it's warm, somewhat waterproof.
28:36And then the tops are navy blue kangaroo, and then all the inlay.
28:40A prickly pair of spines.
28:42The little flowers on the cactus are all kid skin.
28:44I love these a lot.
28:48What are you guys working on?
28:50I moved into this shop last year.
28:53I think it's a great thing to share space with Cathy Severer at Fort Lonesome.
28:58We make custom western wear involving chain stitch embroidery.
29:03Working with clients to highlight their passions or their life stories that they want to narrate visually on their garments.
29:12Maybe this one?
29:13I like this one too.
29:14Do it.
29:15I love having this, like, creative camaraderie.
29:18And then even have a little bit of crossover with the things that we do.
29:23I had a customer from Northern California.
29:25When she was a kid, her parents would take her to see Paul Bunyan and Babe.
29:29It's like a 60-foot statue that was built in the 60s there.
29:32And she said, you know, I really want Paul Bunyan on my boots.
29:36At first, I was a little skeptical.
29:38It was just a little out of my wheelhouse doing people.
29:40But we came up with something really creative and fun and a good opportunity for me to collaborate with Fort Lonesome.
29:46We figured out a way to do a little bit of embroidered inlay in and around Graham's leather work.
29:52There's chain stitch embroidery, like, on Paul Bunyan's chest hair and some, like, furry clouds up in the sky too.
29:59I'm thinking about this as if this pair of boots is going to be around for the next hundred years.
30:06I want someone to find my work, maybe in a garage sale or an estate sale.
30:12Be like, wow, like, this is the quality of stuff that was being made back in 2025.
30:18And so, like, I'm going to take kind of as much time as I feel like I need to, to make the best quality thing that I can put my name on.
30:25The first voyagers to Hawaii traveled on double-hulled canoes, using the stars and the ocean currents as their guides.
30:48But they used sails made out of woven pandanus leaves.
30:55We call it, in Hawaiian, ulana lauhalala.
30:59And that was the material of choice to make our utilitarian materials, from the floor mats to baskets and containers.
31:08But I think the settlement of Hawaii wouldn't have been possible without ulana lauhalala.
31:13I remember, as a young boy, looking at my grandfather's lauhalala hat.
31:21And me trying to figure out how those little strips were interwoven into one another.
31:29So this is the hat that inspired me to learn to weave.
31:33The act of making is something that I learned from teachers and elders.
31:52I also learned ceremonial practices associated with the art form as well.
31:57So when we go to a pandanus, we ask for permission of the plant.
32:06We clean the tree, take off all the old leaves.
32:11And then we harvest the freshly dried leaves, because those would be nice and supple.
32:16First, you would de-thorn the leaf, and then you would roll them into our rolls called kuka'a.
32:32And then you would cut the prepared leaves into sized strips.
32:48And from that point, you would start to do your weaving.
32:51After learning the practice of ulana lauhala, I started to expand into cordage making, into net making, anything using fibers.
33:11I've created historical Hawaiian fans.
33:13This style of fan was only used by the chiefly class within Hawaii.
33:20This crescent-shaped blade with this woven handle.
33:24There's pandanus leaves for the blade.
33:27And there's coconut cordage, along with hibiscus cordage as an accent on the edge.
33:33Just incorporating various techniques that really speak to the creativity of our ancestors.
33:37In Honolulu, I work at the Bishop Museum as the museum's cultural advisor and curator for cultural resilience.
33:50The Bishop Museum was founded by Charles Reed Bishop to honor the legacy of his wife,
33:57one of our last Hawaiian chiefesses, Princess Bernice Pawahi.
34:00All of her family's heirlooms passed to Charles, and Charles created the museum to safeguard those treasures.
34:09And today we have over 25 million specimens representing natural history as well as cultural materials.
34:20So we have four different lei hulu, Hawaiian feather lei, using feathers from the endemic birds to Hawaii,
34:26alongside a mahiole, a feathered helmet that was used by our chiefs to symbolize their status.
34:35Feathers adorned our ali'i, or our royal class.
34:40They stored or maintained mana, which is that spiritual essence or strength that you have within you.
34:48The mahiole belonged to King Kaumualii of Kauai.
34:51All of the individual's mana resided in those physical pieces.
34:57So an item captured that spiritual energy mana of that person.
35:06Hawaiian feathered capes are known as ahu'ula, and it refers to the ancestral capes that chiefs wore.
35:13No other ahu'ula was made like this.
35:17This is the only known Hawaiian cape that has upturned feathers of this type.
35:22To get the feathers to stand this way, and everything to be so uniform,
35:29it's very intentional that they collected without harming the bird, but just using what they need.
35:34The amount gathered from each species is quite staggering.
35:41To create something like this took a community of practitioners.
35:46There would be bird specialists that knew where to acquire the feathers.
35:52There's the people that knew how to prepare the netting,
35:55and then the skilled artisans that would combine all of those materials together.
36:02Hawaiian forest birds are highly endangered.
36:06So I use feathers from birds that are food sources and other birds that molt.
36:12These goose feathers can be harvested after they molt, and then we dye them in different colors.
36:19This particular lei is called a vili poi poi.
36:24The natural curve of the feather is coming away from the yarn.
36:28But with the other style that we do make, the feather is the opposite way, which makes it very smooth.
36:35You're doing thousands and thousands of feathers.
36:39This is called a homo papa.
36:44It's probably the more contemporary out of the lei styles for Hawaiian feather work.
36:51It is made to go on a hat.
36:54But for me, even in creating contemporary pieces,
36:59I like to remember that these were for our ali'i.
37:03If you don't tie on the same place every time, it'll look like this the whole way down.
37:13You have to be able to tie consistently every single feather.
37:18I always try to get my students to think about how much it takes to be so accurate and so technical.
37:23The edge of this feather should be in the middle, so when you tie it...
37:28That allows them to open their eyes to understanding the ingenuity and the craftsmanship of our ancestors.
37:36I see you try to do the no crimp thing on the...
37:40I love to see that realization and that light bulb come on to them.
37:43King Kamehameha I unified all of the islands together.
37:57He did this through conquest and battle, becoming the first king of Hawai'i in 1810.
38:05This palace was completed in 1882.
38:09At the command of King Kalalakaua, he built the palace to send a message to the world.
38:15We're modern, we're educated, we're technologically advanced.
38:19Construction here included telephones and gas lights,
38:23which were replaced by electric lights four years before the White House in Washington, D.C.
38:30Kalalakaua died in 1891.
38:32He had been traveling into the United States.
38:36The Hawaiians did not know he had died until the ship he was expected home on
38:41was spotted off diamond head, draped in black.
38:45Queen Lili Okalani was the heir to her brother.
38:50And during her reign, American businessmen overthrew the Hawaiian government.
38:57She was deposed in 1893.
38:59The provisional government took down the flag of the kingdom of Hawai'i and raised the American flag.
39:06The Republic of Hawai'i started arresting people and then they arrested Lili Okalani.
39:11She was imprisoned in an upstairs room of the palace.
39:15So she began to speak to the future with thread and fabric, creating a quilt from garments, scraps.
39:22The Hawaiian flag is very prominent in the quilt.
39:27It reminds us of who we were and what had happened to us and how strong she was.
39:34In Hawaiian tradition, you go, you sit, you watch, you learn.
39:48So if you don't mind, I'm going to start you from the very beginning.
40:02My sister and I, we have an amazing Hawaiian quilting class.
40:06It's a tradition that's almost four or five generations in our family.
40:09So everything that you see here, all the Hawaiian quilts are one solid design.
40:16It's not pieces put together.
40:19It's just one piece like you have here.
40:22My role is to handle the beginner's table.
40:25We're going to lay your pattern in place.
40:27We're going to pin it down.
40:29We're going to cut it out.
40:30We tell them how to lay the pattern, how to cut it out, how to quilt.
40:33And the ones who say that, I don't think this is meant for me, yeah, it is meant for you.
40:39And we will take the time to teach you how to do it.
40:42My sister and I come from a very traditional family, raised in the Hawaiian way.
40:48My mom, Hoakalani, was born with only one hand, and she was raised by her grandmother.
40:54And the grandmother would always say, no, you can't quilt having only one hand.
40:57But when her grandmother died, she had the dream where her grandmother came to her and says,
41:05you need to look at my quilt patterns.
41:07Then there were 200 full size, 90 by 90 quilt patterns.
41:13My dad looked at that and said, well, why don't we reduce the pattern, make it into a smaller size?
41:20And then my mom was actually able to sew and quilt.
41:24When I started, she was teaching me and she was amazing how she could do it with only one hand.
41:35And she was like a force of nature.
41:37She was so helpful.
41:39And of course, John, with all of these patterns, 90% of the quilts we have made are John's designs.
41:48My dad, from the time that he was growing up, he wanted to be a cop because he loved to help people.
41:58When he retired, he told my mom, we're probably going to want to start a quilting class.
42:04He took his designs from culture, tradition, and from his background with flowers, because his family were lace sellers.
42:17And what's interesting is that he would draw only one eighth of a full design.
42:22He could actually see the full design by just drawing the one eighth.
42:34He's drawn over 2,000 patterns.
42:37And so we have this legacy to work through that is incredible.
42:41I'm very grateful for it.
42:42Make your stitches a little smaller if you can.
42:45We have a table with people who graduate from the beginner's table.
42:49They still need a little help.
42:51Then you have the third table who are the ones that make these huge quilts.
42:57We come to the table and we help each other as we do our own projects.
43:02So it's like our own little family now.
43:05I wanted the jellyfish in a solid color.
43:08Maybe the ocean would be a little bit of a darker blue.
43:12A dark blue, so it'll make it pop.
43:14So that's how you want to do the fish.
43:16I had been thinking that I wanted a masculine quilt.
43:19John and I started talking about the old Hawaiian warriors.
43:24And then he came up to me a couple weeks later and he said,
43:28OK, close your eyes.
43:29And he led me over to his desk and there the pattern was.
43:33I thought, this is a political statement that he's making.
43:38Because the warrior helmets are surrounded by the finials of the Iolani Palace,
43:45like keeping them prisoners inside.
43:48The way I interpreted it was people from the mainland imprisoned the Queen in the Iolani Palace
43:54and took over the islands.
43:56A lot of the old ways were lost because of that.
44:00Maybe John had that in mind.
44:02Susie and I never thought we would be the teachers.
44:08But my mom passed away in 2012.
44:11My dad in 2018.
44:15OK, there you go. That's good.
44:17Susie and I, we talked about what are we going to do about the class.
44:20And we said, you know, all we can do is try.
44:21That was the mission of my parents, to pass that culture on from generation to generation.
44:28So this is my grandmother.
44:31She was taught by Poa Kalani.
44:34I was seven years old and my grandma would bring me every Saturday and we started quilting.
44:39She's done quilts for all of the grandkids.
44:43So she's doing a seahorse right now that John designed.
44:46She wanted whales.
44:48Dolphins, yeah.
44:50Dolphins.
44:56Good job.
44:58Thank you. Thank you so much.
45:00Am I proud? Absolutely.
45:02My dad said it's just a squiggly line on a piece of paper, but the quilters bring it to life.
45:10They keep us going.
45:12So we do it for our quilters.
45:33In Hawaii years ago, you know, racism was here for sure, but it wasn't really addressed.
45:43In the 70s, there was no teaching of Hawaiian language and culture in public schools.
45:49I get out of high school and I have no idea who my ancestors are.
45:53I have no idea where they come from.
45:56And I have no reason to be proud that they were the greatest explorers and navigators on the face of the earth.
46:02But there was a movement that started called the Hawaiian Renaissance.
46:06And there was this idea of building a traditional voyage in Kuna.
46:12That became the flashlight that helped our people get out of the dark of the storm.
46:21This weekend, we are commemorating the launch of Hokulea 50 years ago.
46:25An incredible event that changed the way we see ourselves as Hawaiians, our place here in Polynesia in the Pacific.
46:34Hawai'i is the single most isolated Anan archipelial on the planet.
46:47The Polynesians, 1700 years ago, came across 2,400 miles of open ocean.
46:48How'd they get here?
46:49There had built up over time this idea that maybe they had simply drifted by chance and arrived here in Hawaii.
46:50Hawai'i is the single most isolated Anan archipelial on the planet.
46:56Hawai'i is the single most isolated Anan archipelial on the planet.
47:01And the Polynesians, 1700 years ago, came across 2,400 miles of open ocean.
47:08How'd they get here?
47:10There had built up over time this idea that maybe they had simply drifted by chance and arrived here in Hawai'i.
47:18The existing knowledge was the voyaging canoes couldn't sail from west to east against the predominant trade winds.
47:27Except there were these dreamers.
47:30And one was Herb Kavainoikane.
47:32He was a sculptor and a painter.
47:34And along with Dr. Ben Finney, who was an anthropologist, these two individuals brought together culture and traditions and science.
47:45They made a quiet promise to build a voyaging canoe.
47:49Let's sail it to Tahiti and let's set the record straight.
47:58Constructing the canoe.
47:59They blended that traditional Polynesian understanding of the artistry of the canoe.
48:06And then they brought in marine science and engineering to make sure it could do this 2,400 mile voyage.
48:12The day of the launching, Native Hawaiians were there praying for the canoe.
48:29It has to be successful for our people.
48:32On board the canoe, it was Herb and Ben and Tommy Holmes, one of the top watermen in Hawaii.
48:38And then we get alongside the canoe to push it down the beach.
48:44And then we get alongside the canoe to push it down the beach.
48:47And she went in the water so fast, I was like, wow.
49:01There's just this beautiful canoe.
49:03This beautiful canoe is kind of.
49:08.
49:09Pokalit is about 62 feet long and about 21 feet wide.
49:15She looks as much as a traditional ancient canoe as could be designed.
49:20be designed she's also a sailing canoe and that means that we need wind to power her sails
49:30and so she's double-masted the crew will rotate on three different watches and when they're
49:38off watch they will usually be resting in one of these bunks it's very simple we have hatches that
49:46store water and food beneath them here we have the a very large paddle and it's got a very large blade
49:56that digs back into the water and you actually will operate it by pushing the water towards the
50:02starboard side or towards the port side and this will direct the course of the canoe as you're
50:08sailing but knowing where to go that is the most important part of steering that is the job of the
50:15navigator on board just how did the Polynesians navigate by the stars the day she was launched
50:2650 years ago there was a Micronesian man we call him Mao he was master navigator at a time when there
50:33was only six left Mao became the primary navigator and then the primary teacher for the next 28 years
50:40years when we're trying to find our way without a modern compass without a GPS or a sextant there
50:50are about 200 stars that we really focus on but stars are only visible maybe 10 percent of the time
50:58so as we bring our gaze from the heavens we come down to a very important element of navigation which is
51:06the ocean itself you can see the patterns of the waves waves coming from different directions how are
51:12they changing throughout the day or over the course of many days you're also relying on what kind of
51:19wave motion are you experiencing standing with your two feet on the deck the most advanced navigators are
51:25most in tune to those waves on May 1st 1976 Hokulea I left the trip to 31 days to get to Tahiti
51:40there were an estimated 17,000 Taitans there that's more than half the population they were saying we're
51:46proud of this moment this is our history our legacy our traditions this is our canoe there was two
51:55crews one was a sailor to Tahiti and one was a sailor home so I was on the trip to come home I was
52:03really scared I spent my whole life in the ocean but shallow water coastal stuff now you're gonna be in
52:10the deep it took us 23 days to get home no storm good winds we arrived and there was a celebration
52:25of this amazing feat the sound of aloha to welcome hopeful layer my grandmother was there she was so worried but she
52:36knew I had to go she came up to me and she just put two hands on my face and she looked me in the eye
52:43on this date 50 years ago a dream came to fruition the initial crew that went down to Tahiti in 1976
53:09many of them are here today they're the trailblazers that strengthen our connection to our indigenous
53:15routes of voyaging and navigating that was about a big hand for all of these elders who made the dream
53:22a reality so the ways that we can continue to honor them is by raising up and continuing to sail
53:30when this all started there was the idea that she would only sail one voyage and yet 50 years later
53:40she's actually circumnavigated the planet and has sailed hundreds of thousands of miles with hundreds
53:46of crew members we're only going to be more and more off the wind today I am the first woman to lead
53:54captain and navigate the Hokulea in Hawaii we were so crushed our culture but Hokulea opened that door to go
54:14and change things and be who we are native people Hawaiian people
54:44stream more craft in america on the PBS app
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