[Male Announcer] Funding for this program made possible by... And by... [Female Announcer] The following film documents the Caddo Basketry Workshop sponsored by the Texas Historical Commission in an effort to revitalize this endangered tradition.

[gentle music] [woman speaking native language] ♪ ♪ - Certainly many tribes have gone through the loss of knowledge about their cultural heritage and their arts and crafts.

One of the major pieces I think that the Caddo are known for specifically in historic documents and knowledge passed down was our river cane traditional basketry.

- I feel it's very important because in doing research, I found that there wasn't many references on how to do Caddo baskets.

Even further research, I discovered that there was just a lack of knowledge.

The continuity has been lost with the removals, the lack of resources to use.

There wasn't any elders to access that information from.

I was moved by the fact that there weren't many examples to even refer to that were identified as being Caddo.

And at one point of course, we were such a large group of people, but that's just important for us to relearn and revitalize our culture again.

- I started and I came up.

[Chase] It was definitely a very important part of our ancestral cultural identity, and over the years because of loss of knowledge from elders or not being practiced, it's just one of those things that slipped away from us, that got away from us that we lost.

[bright music] - I think cultural preservation is extremely valuable because it's not only just for yourself, but like, also sharing it, but then it's also a healing process as well.

So healing generational trauma, healing as far as reconciling within yourself where I come from, what is my value?

♪ ♪ - The reason why I chose to be part of the program is I have a passion for working with my hands.

My dad taught me a few things with grass mats and grapevines when we were camping or outside, things like that.

And I've always just loved it.

- Well for me, I've always enjoyed being very culturally active amongst my people, and for me, it's a new experience to learn how to do new things I've always had interest in.

And yeah, I've, well, I've loved art ever since a little child.

- It is a good thing to be able to make this because you have to let go of yourself and allow yourself to be at peace and just being a part of it and a part of me is going into it and I know that it's not just a piece of material, but it's a part of who I am.

It's a piece of who I am.

- I've never done basketry before, but it's something I've really been interested in for a long time.

Just for like practical use even.

It was definitely not daunting.

I love learning it.

I love working with my hands like that.

So yeah, I really, I'm really enjoying it so far.

Again, just finding kind of an art medium that I can play with and hopefully take off with.

- Everything that I've learned so far has mostly been self-taught, and so in order to learn better and efficient ways and even honoring what they did and how well they did it, that needs to be passed on and continued, it's a true art.

[Sue] These single ones that seem to get you.

- And the different practical aspects, mats to cover your floor, keeping the moisture from their feet and keeping their food stores, their herbs from getting too damp.

All those things are important to me.

That is why I wanted to learn, but it's important to continue on those traditions and share that history and see where our people can take it in the future with artistic and contemporary influence.

- Well for me, it's a little different because most people don't have my limitations, which me, I'm actually legally blind.

So for me, it's more reconstructing of challenge of how to do something that most people can't do in my limitation.

It means that I can at least probably pass on, well, inspiration to other people I would hope.

That's what I kind of hope to strive for in my art is to inspire other people.

- I am fairly new to this.

I've made a couple of coiled pine needle baskets in the past, but the weaving and the pattern, seeing the pattern, specifically the turkey pattern that we are making right now, the turkey is a very prominent part of our culture, and you can see it in many different activities that we do in our dancing, in our regalia, and our stories.

Being able to do that really brings a lot of pride to me and it's something that I'm going to take with me and I'm gonna be able to give to my, to my family and to my tribe.

- Did you want the smooth side on the outside?

- The Caddo people definitely have a very strong and proud and broad history, and one that's not often taught.

And so by participating in workshops like this, we definitely get to learn more about not only our history, but then decide where we want to take that in the future.

How do we blend our history and our traditions and then push that into the future?

What does that look like?

[gentle music] - I'm Sue Fish, I'm Chickasaw and Choctaw from Norman, Oklahoma, and I am a Native American basket maker.

Take your basket and we're just gonna take two spokes and go behind two spokes.

As a basket maker, this program fits right along with my passion, and that is keeping basket making alive in any tribe.

...make sure that this weaver...

I play it by ear when you're coming in cold and you don't really know a lot about the level of the basket weaving.

You don't wanna insult somebody, then you don't wanna make something a little more complicated.

[bright music] I'm gonna take this.

That's why I did the round reed, that was really kind of wet their whistle more or less get their interest like hey.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Vivian] We're gonna cut about between 10 and 15 stocks for each of the basket students.

Now hopefully they'll be able to make a small basket.

- You can only get about four feet out of it.

- It's an advanced class.

They have to watch how I do it.

And that's the best way to learn is when you're watching someone, and this is not, you know, written in stone or anything.

This is the way I do it.

Did you bring your knife?

- I did.

I should get it out.

- That's one thing about working with the river cane.

You can't be afraid of using a knife.

I've had some elderly ladies, they say, "Oh we can't do it."

And I'm like, I think what I had to do for them was to tell them if they could peel a potato, it's just like peeling a potato, and they were fine.

Let's take that one.

I like it.

- Oh!

Oh my goodness.

[Vivian] Yeah, that's good.

What you'll find is those little stems, [Kristi] Mm-hmm.

[Vivian] they alternate their growth.

[Kristi] Oh.

[Vivian] See, watch.

See how this one's on here?

Then you'll flip it over and see this one on the other side, and that's-- they just alternate.

[bright music] ♪ ♪ - I think I'm getting a patch at my house.

To me it's more of a spiritual thing.

There's so much honoring our earth and how nature recycles everything that we use, you know, and when you think of how our ancestors, they lived and that was their life, they would gather and forage.

I got eight, so yeah, I need to get two more.

I'm gonna go look at this mushroom.

And being respectful.

Don't take everything, you want to be able to come back and utilize that material again and cultivate the growth of it.

It's being a good steward of our earth.

[leaves rustling] Knowing now how to really harvest the best way, and it does change from person to person, which is another great thing about nature.

You know, it's-- you're not gonna find a perfectly measured spike or splint out of any material that you process and gather yourself because it's in the wild, it's growing wild, it has its own measurements, and so that is something that is really unique about the whole process.

[plants rustling] [Yonavea] It's been an interesting learning experience because one of the terms that I was thinking about, and actually Jay brought it up, it's like a resuscitation of our culture.

You know, it's something that's died out and we're bringing it back to life again.

And I thought that was a good term that he had come up with and that's true.

- I quite enjoyed actually going out and harvesting it.

I always loved being out in nature, it's very enjoyable, and working with my mom in the process too was very helpful because I suggest this thing to her, she'd suggest that to me.

I just try to keep bouncing off our ideas.

[leaves rustling] - Having been removed from Texas, you know, which has always been an issue anyways, the lack of resources, you know, to be able to continue this process, we're gonna have to have resources and find those locations with those cane breaks.

So to be able to continue this process, continue this education, obviously we're gonna have to have the materials so they can learn on how to harvest it and process it to make it work for them.

[Katey] Can we say one more?

- One, two, three, four, five.

- Can put your little ones in there, I'm getting disoriented.

- There's 10 fat ones.

- There is 10 fat ones?

I have a deep love of being in nature in the woods like that and so just crawling around and getting to not only harvest the cane, but just look at all the life coming from that area was really amazing.

All the different mushrooms and things crawling around.

Just connecting with the earth in that way is something I am never hesitant to do.

[loppers squeak] That's a good word.

- He says that, I swear at least-- - No one's gonna go harvest river cane for you.

So I think we quickly realized that finding, cutting, harvesting, and processing river cane is a huge process.

Just like going, finding, digging, and processing clay.

[loppers snap cane] [laughing] - No.

- Help you out there.

- Right there.

[loppers snap cane] [bright music] [group chatting] ♪ ♪ [Katie] It was something that I've always admired people being able to do, but I didn't ever even know where to begin or how to take something like a piece of cane down to a weaveable fiber.

That just continues to blow my mind.

- And it took me a long time to get the process down, but this is how I do it by hand.

And you'll have to excuse me, I haven't had to do this in a few years, so it might split off.

So that's how I start it.

And then... And how I would just work it this way.

You keep your wrist fairly straight, taut... [cane cracking] and it guides through there.

I'm on the big end, so as I get to the smaller end, it's gonna... [cane cracking] Yeah, it's gonna start this way and come off.

[group chatting] - It's so pretty inside.

- I know, it's so pretty.

- Something I've been wanting to do for a long time, kind of reviving or helping to revive Caddo basketry, and I just never thought I would really be able to do it, and so it was really nice to be able to have the funding to realize this project.

- The knife doesn't cut you, you do.

So careful, yeah, yeah.

When you start to run out of room-- [Kristi] I've always been involved in the culture, the arts.

I worked for the Library of Congress before I worked for my current foundation.

So I've always been around in and out of both Indian country and then also just the arts and culture field as well.

This program has been extremely valuable I think, not only to our tribe and it's energized us to come together and do this together as a group.

So that has been really helpful to realize you're not alone.

[Vivian] And then that's when you just, I take my hand and I'll just peel it right off.

- Oh, definitely peeling, and I don't think I'll be alone in saying that.

It was such a feeling.

You can see it whenever Vivian does it, it's like she just has a flow about it.

Whereas like we're trying to like kind of nitpick at it.

It's very much a feeling.

Peeling cane, especially as thin as she's telling us that it can be, is just really been really difficult.

But again, I think once you gain the feel for it, it's something that'll feel really, really rewarding.

[gentle piano music] - It's been a interesting process.

It's been a learning experience to go back and see how it's done.

You have to be focused, and the end goal is trying to complete that processed cane, a lot of sore fingers.

You have to have a lot of admiration for how they did it before.

[Chase] I like his taped fingers.

[laughing] - Well I definitely sliced myself pretty good.

It's like, I didn't feel it though.

It's like, why is there blood on the cane all of a sudden?

[laughs] - Some of the tools that we use now to help us do that, they didn't have those.

So it's like what did they, what did they use, you know, to make that process go for them?

In today's terms and stuff, we have those tools and the process is still, it's still long and, you know, it is kind of hard.

It was probably a community effort too.

You probably had several weavers coming together and helping to process it to get that final result.

[Chase] Basketry was one of the arts that I feel is missing.

Certainly there hasn't been any traditional basket makers, using river cane that is, probably for hundreds of years.

[Katie] Skimming she says.

- So we decided that it would be best to kind of ease some Caddo members into it with commercial reed and then push them into the almost advanced level river cane.

River cane basketry though is always my focus.

I feel like it is the most important representation of Southeastern basketry.

Something that kind of pinpoints them in the region and kind of shows our historic culture.

- I'm a generational weaver, so I have my mother, my aunts, my grandmother, great-grandfather, they were all weavers.

I put my thumb over the joint and then pull it up, and then sort of use my index finger as a guide to just sort of let that smooth side of it go over my finger.

When my mother was living, we always did our baskets together, and one of the topics of our conversation while we were weaving was that she just said, "We need that knowledge of river cane basketry."

There it is, okay.

We're gonna probably get after it.

We didn't know how to get it.

We just went down to the river and just started cutting.

[loppers snapping cane] My mom passed away in '97 and we didn't have that knowledge.

I started researching, reading about the old weavers.

I was able to become faster, quicker.

[bright music] But it was always a desire to get the river cane in the what they call Western Cherokee and Oklahoma Cherokees.

And I've done that.

And now I want to pass that knowledge on.

I didn't know how this class would respond.

It's not easy.

They're very determined to learn.

When I weave a basket, it's a continuation of knowing that they knew that it was gonna keep going, the knowledge would keep going, and that's important to me.

I don't like to weave passed the first one.

If I'm teaching a class, it's a good feeling for me to see the others take interest in it.

When I see a revitalization of an art form that has been diminished, I wouldn't say it's lost because someone knows and they will teach.

And I'm trying to do my best to keep it going, the knowledge going forward.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ This was one of my favorites to do because we have our unbroken friendship pattern, and then we've got arrow point, and then we've got mountains.

Let's see, what else?

No, that's about all.

- I think a lot of people don't realize how much these arts and our foods and our culture really is contributing to the mental health and the overall wellness of various tribes.

All the tribes.

Getting back to those things is such a big, I feel like the term healing is overused, but it is, it's a really big healing process for communities to have access to ourselves.

- Three, three, one, two, three, there it is.

And then over four.

- I know that I do things differently than others, and I like that, I wanna cultivate that style and learn traditional patterns and create my own and look around to see what else I can make.

- Well I would hope I could be.

I mean it'd be kind of nice to actually have something out there.

I was telling a lot of people, it's basically like a life or death situation of cultural importance because it's either the death of the Caddo baskets or it's the rebirth of the Caddo baskets.

It's gonna be one or the other.

[upbeat music] [group chatting] - So I was telling my mom yesterday that it's literally one of the hardest things I've ever done.

So it's really, I feel like it could be one of the most rewarding things too though.

Difficulty does not equate to not enjoying it.

It's absolutely amazing.

The appreciation that I've gained for artists who spend their life doing this work.

- Yeah, you're gonna weave, weave the sides up with one of these, the weavers.

- I didn't have any expectations coming into doing it.

I knew I wanted to find a creative outlet that connected me to my culture.

I hope I can carry on with it in one format or another, and all the different ways of connecting to the earth are really valuable to me.

[Chase] It's not like you just go to the store and buy the material.

You really have to work hard to find the material, to process it to do this more traditional work.

- I'm sorry, I'm a clothespin person.

- No, I-- - I want it to be down.

- Yes, it needs to stay down.

Yeah, stay down.

- Stay down.

- This is way already better than yesterday.

I really feel strongly we have some people that will be able to take this and pass it on and teach it to Caddos so we can keep the basketry alive.

- That's a way to honor my ancestors is to teach whatever I learn and cultivate that creativity in someone else.

You give them the basics.

There's no strict rules, give them that freedom to create.

You don't have to do it exactly like me, but this is what I do, and this is my outcome I'm seeking.

To me, that's honoring our ancestors.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ [gentle music] ♪ ♪ [Male Announcer] Funding for this program made possible by... And by...