(Waves crashing) (Ambient noise, drumming) Kenichi Tasaka  The first day, I was kind of nervous, but so many people came over here interviewed me before I got to Washington, so I got little used to, but I never been in a big crowd like that to demonstrate these things you know.

That's the thing, but after one day I was okay.

Marie McDonald That I think is the craziest question that ever came my way is, "Are these real?"

You know, pointing out to the flowers.

I say, yeah, they're real.

"Yeah, but they don't look real.

They look plastic."

I say, "No, they're real.

They're real."

Narrator Every summer, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service hold a festival on the National Mall in the shadow of the Washington Monument.

The event is called the Festival of American Folklife.

It's a celebration of the diverse ethnic and cultural traditions of America.

Visitors get to meet and to talk with people from different backgrounds, from different places.

The 1989 festival featured people from a place whose very name has come to mean ethnic and cultural diversity.

Marie McDonald Our flora today in Hawaiʻi, very much like our people - mixed up, chop suey, you know, from all over the world.

And the neat thing is that they're compatible.

You know, they live well together.

Narrator Marie McDonald is a lei maker.

She was one of more than 100 people from Hawaiʻi, invited to the festival, all selected by the Smithsonian to share the rich diversity of Hawaii's folk life.

Marie McDonald We make shortened ones that we wear around our wrists too.

Woman: Around your ankles too?

Marie: Around our ankles too.

Eell, you know, we didn't have any precious stones, you know, to make a jewelry with, you know, to ornament our bodies.

So we use the flowers, you know, the natural material that we had.

Narrator  The lei maker is home now on the 10 acre nursery that she and her husband have in the rolling hills of South Kohala on the Big Island.

Here they grow the flowers and other plants found in some of Hawaiʻi's most beautiful leis.

Since coming home, she's had a chance to think about the festival.

Marie McDonald I'll tell you, one of the neatest experiences I had there was this little girl that came on the first day, and her name was Sarah, and she came with a grandmother, and she stood in front of my table there with her, you know, like this, and watched very quietly.

Her grandmother said, I'll leave you.

And she ran off to look at something else.

Came back.

Are you ready to go?

She just sat there.

And she stayed there for about two hours, just watching.

I chatted with her a little bit, you know, and asked her if she would like to try one of these.

And she said, "Sure, we have a nice garden.

I'm going to try some."

So she went home, and I didn't think anything about it.

I thought, well, this little girl is going to go home and try this simple technique, because I showed her a simple one.

She was about 11 years old.

She came back on the last day, you know, she said, I tried it.

And I didn't even know.

I didn't recognize the girl when she came back the last day, and I looked down, I said, "You tried, you tried what?"

She said, "I tried to make this lei."

She said, "I can."

And I said, "Did you bring it with you?"

She says, "No, but it wasn't the best lei, but I can do it.

I think, like you said, if I practice, I can be good, you know."

So that was a neat experience there.

I really shared something, and somebody got something out of it.

You know, this little girl, cute little girl.

Narrator Esther Makuaʻole, learned as a little girl how to weave the leaves of the pandanus into bracelets and hats and baskets.

Visitors not only were interested in her skill, but also in the language she and her assistant spoke, one not often heard even in Hawaiʻi.

Puakea Nogelmeier  Maikaʻi hōʻike.

Makemake ʻoe e hoʻolohe hōʻū i kekahi mea maka ʻōlelo hawaiʻi.

Esther Makuaʻole ʻAe.

He just told me you wanted to hear more Hawaiian.

And I told him ʻaʻole.

Which is no.

Puakea Nogelmeier Only because she's being a rascal.

Esther Makuaʻole No I told him ʻae.

Puakea Nogelmeier ʻAe.

Esther Makuaʻole Then I'll ask him the next question: Nui ka poʻe maʻaneʻi kēia lā.

Puakea Nogelmeier ʻAe ʻae.

Nui ʻino.

Esther Makuaʻole Now your turn to interpret.

Puakea Nogelmeier She says, oh there's plenty of people coming today.

Yeah and there's going to be more.

Narrator A million people would visit the festival during the 10 days it was held.

Governor John Waiheʻe, among them.

The Smithsonian had approached the governor with the idea of featuring Hawaiʻi in the 1989 festival to mark the state's 30th anniversary in the union.

The governor endorsed the idea, and that led to the commitment of nearly a million dollars by the state and private industry to pay for it.

Son-in-law Asians have a tendency of leaving their shoes at the doorway.

Narrator Kenichi Tasaka was a major contributor to the festival, not with money, but with his presence.

He makes sandals from bulrushes like his father before him.

The father learned how in Japan.

The Nisei son didn't learn until he was 83.

The sandal maker is now 92 and the oldest at the festival.

Because of his age, he asked the Smithsonian also to invite his son-in-law.

He could talk with visitors while the old man worked.

Woman Looks very comfortable.

Son-in-law In an Asian family where, if you had your slipper assigned to you, and these was saying that if you had it put on the floor, you could identify your your slippers by the color.

Different colors are used to match the pair.

So if you got 10 pairs, you can find yours without having to wait all day, right?

My daughter has some earrings, Christy.

Earrings that are made out of the bull rush.

Woman 2 Oh, that's cute.

Woman It's a little shoe.

Woman 2 Oh, here they're on the table.

Son-in-law Yeah, there's some here on the table.

Narrator When he's not gathering bulrushes along Kauaʻi's North Shore, the sandal maker can be found in a workshop behind his house in Hanalei.

He jokingly says the festival has created too much interest in his hobby.

Kenichi Tasaka Since I was there making slipper, I have more others from Honolulu.

They call me in a telephone, and somebody from mainland.

They want, they want me to sell for them.

You know, they pay the postage and everything, but I cannot make fast enough, fast enough.

(Rock spitting) Narrator No one at the festival worked harder than Thomas Kamaka Emmsley.

Man It's incredible what - that it's such a natural and abundant rock form, and it's so easy to work with.

Plus, the fact, it makes a beautiful, makes a beautiful surface when it's done.

Narrator Onlookers don't realize that the rocks are not Hawaiian.

The Smithsonian wanted to respect tradition and not take lava rocks from Hawaii.

So similar rocks were found in Idaho and shipped to Washington.

Man This is really well done.

Narrator Wall building and everything else ended early the first day, mid afternoon, it rained for two hours.

The unscheduled Hawaiian blessing would leave the exhibit area wet and muddy for several days, but visitors would not seem to mind.

(Ambient noise) Kid 1  They have all those slashes on it.

They ruined it, didn't they.

Or they're gonna paint over it.

Kid 2 Yeah, paint over it.

Kid 1 Or they're probably gonna smoothen it off or something, or cut it off.

Hold your ears it's gonna be loud.

(Machine whirs) Narrator  The canoe builder was a big favorite.

He was shaping the log of Hawaiian koa into a small outrigger canoe.

While he worked, an assistant answered questions.

Man 2 It that, that the tool, did he design that himself?

Assistant Yeah, he calls it the termite.

It's like a high speed adze (machine whirs) Woman 3 Cedar?

Assistant No, it's much harder than cedar.

It's called koa.

The worms don't eat it.

It's hard.

Woman 3 Yeah, I suppose his grandfather used a handmade tool.

Assistant You know, it.

And his father.

Of course, they used stone.

In the ancient times, they cut it with basalt adzes and axes.

Woman 3 Now, is this the boat and another piece will be the out part or?

Assistant Well, what he'll do here is he'll shape out, he'll rough out the shape of the hull, and he'll have the inside hollowed out, and it'll be very close to completely finished.

And then see the big sections of wood just there under the photograph.

Those will be the deck sections called manu.

And afterwards he'll put gunnels on it, then fasten the interior structures and put the seats on, and it'll look like the canoe inside the tent when it's done.

Woman 3 Ah and then he's gonna take it down to the Potomac.

(Machine whirring) Narrator  Koa canoe building is something of a dying art.

Wright Bowman is one of only a few people still doing it.

He does it in his spare time at the canoe shed at Kamehameha Schools.

It's here that he's literally invented his own tools and techniques.

A lot of visitors at the festival wanted to know about that.

Wright Bowman, Jr. See, on the east coast, they have a lot of boat builders, and they were impressed with all my tools that I did bring.

And I would tell them of some other stuff that I developed and they were quite interested.

Many questions of, how did I, you know, technical questions.

I would explain to them how I use my tools, and so they were impressed with that part of it.

Man on stage My father was born in Hawaiʻi in the late 1800s Narrator Someone had the idea of building an imaginary country store and then having the folks from Hawaiʻi take turns sitting out front and talking.

Visitors learned a lot about island life this way.

Man on stage Like anybody else, you fight for survival, and survival is you have to work to get money, to feed the family and take care of everything.

So my father opened the Chinese restaurant in the late 1940s and so all of us in the family worked in the restaurant.

When my older brother was old enough to learn... Narrator Visitors must have liked the idea.

There always was a crowd in front of K. Awa Grocery.

Leodegario Reyno later would have his turn in front of the store.

He would talk about learning to weave coconut leaves as a boy in the Philippines, and how he came to Hawaiʻi to work in a sugar mill.

Now he's retired from the mill, but his hobby keeps him nearly as busy making hats and baskets for friends and teaching anyone interested.

He does it all for just a smile.

If anyone enjoyed the festival more than the weaver of coconut leaves, you'd be hard pressed to find him.

Long before Filipino immigration to Hawaiʻi, there were the missionaries from New England.

They brought with them a kind of weaving tradition, quilting.

Island women went on to create a unique folklife tradition of their own.

Spectator Hawaiian quilts, all the patterns do have a symbolic meaning?

Mealiʻi Kalama They do.

Narrator Mealiʻi Kalama is herself a quilt.

Caucasian on her father's side, Polynesian on her mother's.

Mealiʻi Kalama The culture back of that in Hawaiʻi is, the quilts are made to be used on the bed.

And if you were to lay your quilt on the bed with the seam in the middle, it means a division between husband and wife.

Narrator  The quilter is a pastor at Kawaiahaʻo Church.

She also teaches quilting classes here.

She often encounters the same reaction from people when they hear her name.

The people at the festival were no exception.

Mealiʻi Kalama Coming from Hawaiʻi, they expected to see a brown skinned person, and here I was with a Hawaiian name, Mealiʻi Kalama, and they wanted to know how much of a Hawaiian was I.

Then I had to explain that my mother was pure Hawaiian, but my father was an Englishman, and so this is why I'm half brown and half white.

(Laughs) (Ambient noise) Narrator  While the young woman from Kauaʻi quietly went about her work, the Reverend Duane Pang not so quietly went about his.

(Clanging / Chanting in Chinese) Narrator The Reverend is conducting a ceremony to bless a new lion for a traditional Chinese lion dance.

The ritual involves bringing the lion to life with a symbolic drop of blood from a rooster, a special animal to the Chinese.

Most of the crowd was unaware of all the symbolism, but it didn't seem to matter.

It was just interesting to watch you.

(Drumming) (Chanting in Chinese) Narrator  Visitors to the festival knew there were Chinese in Hawaiʻi, but many did not know there also were cowboys.

(Machine whirs) Narrator Robert Ruiz is a firefighter by profession, but a cowboy at heart.

He grew up on a ranch in Kauaʻi and learned how to make saddles.

He's got quite a reputation for his skill and demand for his saddles.

His partner at the festival is a real life cowboy.

Henry Silva rides a range in upcountry Maui, branding, fencing and shoeing horses.

He's become well known in upcountry for his rawhide braiding.

Other ranch hands provide the rawhide, and he provides them with ropes and whips.

Henry Silva That's a four braid rope, this is a eight braid ring.

That's a sixth braid whip, and that's an eighth grade rope.

It's all made out of cowhide.

You know what is cowhide?

Narrator The shy, soft spoken cowboy is back on the ranch now, where the horses outnumber the people, where he's more comfortable.

Narrator At first he did not want to go to Washington.

You see, Henry Silva had never left Hawaiʻi before, but his wife and friends changed his mind, and he's glad they did.

Now, there's something this tough cowboy will never forget.

Henry Silva When I was with the children, I think, yeah, I think it was, had some - like a little boy - he really hit me, that little boy.

He couldn't talk or hear what, you know, the sign language.

And, gee, I was talking to him.

I didn't know.

And I guess he was always, watching up there.

Then I seen this woman giving that sign language, and by that we made him rope the thing, so that, you know, really hit me.

(Machine whirs) Woman 4  How did you learn to do this?

Narrator Lisa Hiroe learned how to make dolls as a little girl in Japan.

After the war, she brought her skill to Hawaiʻi.

She got a job as a dishwasher and later owned her own restaurant.

All the time, continuing to make dolls.

It was not until 30 years later that someone gave her a doll from China made of paper.

Lisa Hiroe studied the doll, and soon was making her own.

She's never again used expensive fabric for her dolls, only paper.

The dolls are nonetheless exquisite.

Narrator People patiently waited every day for their turn in front of Wah Chan Thom, the calligrapher.

He was not only demonstrating his ancient craft, he was giving away free samples.

Chinese proverbs from the hand of the master, may your life be as lofty as the southern mountains, may your fortune be as deep as the Eastern Sea.

And for young entrepreneurs, one charmingly Chinese, may the turnover of your merchandise be as speedy as revolving wheels.

The calligrapher is a retired businessman.

He's now 86 and lives in Makiki.

He was a little boy in Chinese school in Honolulu when teachers noticed his talent.

He's quite proud of all the attention his talent got at the festival.

Wah Chan Thom Oh, I think they're impressed greatly, and they're curious more than anything else about how I am going to construct the different words, different characters, and how I phrase, how I can swing my brush from left to right and all the time putting it the right position instead of measuring off slowly.

So they are all curious the construction of the woods and how fast I can finish it.

Narrator Food certainly is an important part of folklife traditions.

Visitors got to see the preparation of a pig for a lūʻau to roast in what may have been the first imu ever dug on the National Mall.

(Ambient noise) Narrator There were several food demonstrations, including one using a Portuguese forno or earthen oven.

This one was built by the Smithsonian from plans provided by Manuel Correia of Oʻahu.

He said they did a pretty good job.

(Woman speaking Spanish) Narrator Manuel Correia was baking loaves of Portuguese bread prepared by his wife.

This is how the Correias spoiled their six children who refused to eat bread from a store.

(Ambient noise) (Crowd clapping) Puakea Nogelmeier Ladies and gentlemen, kalua pig.

Hawaiian style!

Narrator The canoe builder's work was going along smoothly so that he had more time to talk shop.

Wright Bowman, Jr.

It's tapered in.

So when I put my patch in, it doesn't fall through.

Man 3 Okay, just put it in a blocks in at like a 45 degree angle, or 30 degrees?

Man 3 Oh just five degrees?

Oh ok. Oh great.

Wright Bowman, Jr. Five degrees.

man 4 You pre-cut your patch before you put it on?

Wright Bowman, Jr.

Sometimes I do.

I usually make the opening, then I measure.

man 4 Then you trim it around.

Narrator It would take Wright Bowman more than a 10 day festival to build a canoe by himself.

So the Smithsonian shipped one of his canoes to Washington for visitors to see and touch.

Visitors also came to hear.

They were fascinated by the variety of island music and dance you.

(Instrumental music) (Japanese folk music) (Singing in Samoan) (Korean folk music) (Portuguese folk music) (Japanese folk music) (Singing in Hawaiian: Haʻina ʻia mai ana ka puana 'hone ana o'u wesei ku'u poli ku'u poli ku'u poli) (Crowd clapping) Narrator The festival of American Folklife has been held every year since 1967.

Someone has described it as a symbol of our ability as a nation to find unity in our diversity.

It makes us proud of who we are, and it's through that appreciation of who we are that we appreciate others.

Marie McDonald I think they got to see what life was really like, and they were impressed with it.

Because, you know, one guy says to me, "How come I've been in Hawaiʻi three times, and how come I never saw these things?"

Well, that's because you went to the other side of the island.

That was the answer we gave them.

You were on the other side of the island.

If you came to our side of the island, and you attended our festivals, you know, and and you joined in our parties, you know the local people, the people who lived there, then you would have seen these things.

Narrator Aʻohe o kahi nana o luna o ka pali; iho mai a lalo nei; ʻike i ke au nuli ke au ike, he alo a he alo.

Don't look at us from the top of the cliff.

Come   down here and learn of the big and little currents face to face.

(Hawaiian music playing:   You me i a`u kapono, ika no ho rocking chair - instrumental music - Ha`ina `ia mai kapuana `hone ana o'u wesei ku`u poli Ha`ina `ia mai kapuana `hone ana o'u wesei ku`u poli ku`u poli ku`u poli) (Crowd clapping)