- [Stephfond] Tonight on "WPBS Weekly: Inside the Stories."

Never forget.

As 9/11 approaches, we share a memorable story.

And a documentary released earlier this year dives into three indigenous architects using their cultural heritage as an inspiration for designs.

Also, the Lake Placid Olympic Center gets a facelift.

Is it a sign for a future Olympics?

All this and more coming up right now on "WPBS Weekly: Inside the Stories."

(soaring orchestral music) - [Announcer] "WPBS Weekly: Inside the Stories" is brought to you by the Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center and Carthage Savings, mortgage solutions since 1888.

- Good evening, everyone.

And welcome to "WPBS Weekly: Inside the Stories."

I'm Stephfond Brunson.

This Tuesday evening, we begin with a powerful story of remembrance.

In just a few short days, stories of 9/11 survivors and first responders will air all over the world.

The unforgettable day happened in New York City two decades ago.

But for some, the memories are still fresh.

(text whooshes) (light chiming music) - Thank you, Stephfond.

I'm here with Michael Bielawa, and he was part of the clean-up crew after 9/11.

Michael, how are you doing today?

- I'm doing fine, thank you.

- Let's start off.

Where were you the morning of September 11th, 2001?

- I was working on a construction site at the corner of East 23rd Street and 1st Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

It was a beautiful fall day.

A little crisp air.

And the sky was as blue as blue could be.

There was wasn't a cloud in the sky.

- And how did you learn of the events that took place that day?

- I was at the construction site, and somebody had called another person in the trailer and had said a plane had just struck the World Trade Center.

And there happened to be a bar right next to our job site.

And believe it or not, it was open.

And we went in.

You know, I remember standing in that bar.

There was the five or six regular sitting there at nine o'clock in the morning.

And they were crying.

And I was in utter disbelief, seeing what I was watching on the TV, thinking what was happening a mile away in Downtown Manhattan.

The city was at that time in total chaos.

Gridlock, subways weren't running, traffic wasn't movin'.

The city was basically in lockdown.

So I knew I wasn't gonna be able to get home that day.

So I did meet up with my sister-in-law, who lived a few blocks away.

And come the next day, on Wednesday morning, I was called and asked if I could make my way to the West Side Highway, meet some heavy equipment operators, and escort them down to Ground Zero.

Seeing the fire safe, seeing the the debris everywhere, seeing rescue trucks, seeing ambulances, seeing the first wave of rescuers.

Something that was still on my mind, in my memory.

You know, it was taking this all in and seeing the ash that was everywhere, papers that were everywhere.

No one could be seen.

And then seeing two people in contamination suits, like this was a movie.

(quiet orchestral music) Our company was given the southwest quadrant of the Trade Center site, which is Battery Park, Albany Street, going north towards Battery Park City.

It would be the World Financial Center at Saint Nicholas's Church.

That was no longer there.

We had the Vista Hotel, the Trade Center.

And, you know, that was basically our area to work.

It still amazes me to see the volunteers that showed up to help.

The good in people was there that day.

Everyone wanted to help.

This rescue recovery went on for nine months.

And, you know, on that Wednesday, the 29th, when we had the Last Column ceremony, there was no work takin' place that day.

It was just the ceremony.

(people applauding) And I remember walking back past the site, looking at it, and hearing the water (water rushing) that would come out of the foundation wall.

Because basically the Hudson River is right there.

You know, it was so tranquil.

And to hear that water percolating through the foundation wall and to think what has happened in the past nine months.

There's little things like that that, you know, come back to me here 20 years later.

And I say to myself, "Wow, pretty amazin'."

You know, I tell people one of the toughest things in being there was meeting survivors.

You know, I think that that last day with the column ceremony, I met a widow with her daughter.

And she talked about how she talked with her husband that day and how she was so upset with him, that he went back into the building and didn't exit with his coworkers.

(gentle piano music) For everyone lost that day, there's a story to be told.

- Can you talk a little bit about your connection to Clarkson University and what you've done over the past 20 years to keep the memories alive?

- I think it was November, December of 2001.

One night I came home.

In the mail was the Clarkson alumni magazine.

I remember standing in my hallway in shock when I saw four alumni were listed as dying on 9/11.

And I knew automatically there was a connection there, I knew.

And as the cleanup went on, there were requests for steel to be donated to make memorials for those lost.

And there's some steel slated to go someplace, I believe, in Europe.

And those plans fell through.

And I knew the person that was coordinating it, coordinating the oversight of that distribution.

And I said, you know, "Could I ask on behalf of my college university "for the memorial steel?"

And he said, "By all means."

So I reached out to my friend, Don Dangermen.

Don and I had not spoke.

I called him out of a clear blue sky.

And I said, "Don, you know, this is what's goin' on.

"Would you be willing to accept the steel "on behalf of Clarkson?"

Said, "Definitely, yes."

I made the arrangements and had Don receive the steel in Potsdam.

And you know, Don called me the day that I reached there and just said the facilities people were in awe of what they received, to think where it came from and what it represented.

To me, 9/11 is a day of reflection, to think about what happened that day, honor those that were lost that day, keep their memory alive.

And the most important thing is that we never forget.

- Michael, thanks again.

Thank you so much for your time.

I really appreciate it.

- Oh, you're welcome.

Thank you.

(text whooshes) - Certain days during the year are set aside to celebrate our Earth.

But one documentary recently released doesn't wanna wait for a day.

A fresh film dives into three indigenous architects who are using their cultural heritage as an inspiration for designs that revere indigenous ways while celebrating the Earth.

Take a look.

(text whooshes) (light chiming music) (text whooshes) (birds chirping) - [Peder] Long before skyscrapers, suburban sprawl, and parking garages overtook our landscape, Canada was shaped by mountains, forest, and grassland.

But within a few hundred years, a relative blip on the continent's vast geological timeline, our cities, streets, and sidewalks have reshaped large swaths of the country and brought significant ecological changes along with it.

Most often, not for the better.

But not all believe our current path of paving over and stacking up is set in stone.

- [Douglas] To love the rivers and the forest and the mountain streams, and to love the clear waters and the wind blows across our brow, to love as we love.

To the young indigenous architects, if they spoke from the heart, it would show another way of looking at the world.

- [Peder] A new documentary, "From the Earth to the Sky," showcases a movement of indigenous architects looking to draw on the centuries of skill and tradition from their ancestors.

- They had the (speaks in foreign language) or the winter-home pit house structure, which was a circular structure.

And the Coast Salish have their big long houses.

So we wanted to kind of morph the idea of pit house and long house together and create one sort of expression.

- [Peder] The director, Ron Chapman, hoping the film doesn't just inspire more indigenous youth to play an active part in the molding of the landscape, but to inspire non-indigenous people like himself to reconsider how we see and value our surroundings, to remember the land we stand on is not ours and should be respected.

- I got to know the indigenous communities like I never would have had I not had this incredible opportunity.

And it was an incredible education.

And what I wanted to do with the film was to be able to take those things that were such an aha moment for me, that were such learning experiences for me, and put them in the film in a way that they would hopefully connect with other non-indigenous people who would then see indigenous cultures through new eyes.

(tranquil music) (birds chirping) - [Peder] A line can be drawn from all the architects spotlighted to Douglas Cardinal, the country's very first professional indigenous architect and one of the most revered and respected architects Canada has ever produced.

Cardinal made it his mission to use his gift of shaping and building to respect the land upon which his structures stand.

One of his early notable works, the Canadian Museum of History, formerly known as the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

- [Douglas] I wanted it to be a very powerful stone form that was shaped by wind and water and felt like it grew from the land.

Symbol of land and water and people entwined in the architecture.

'Cause what I wanted to say was we came from nature and we're part of nature.

That's what I wanted to express in the building as a sculptural work of art.

(rhythmic vocal music) - [Peder] Daniel Glenn is another renowned architect driving the movement.

A member of the Crow Nation in Montana, Glenn grew up drafting for his father's architecture and construction firm by the age of 14, the only indigenous-owned firm of its kind in the state.

- So I decided to go to architecture school.

And there, I really started to love the profession and what it could be.

But also, I got very skeptical of it.

Because I found in the schools of architecture, it's mostly about designing for the super rich or for the elites of society.

- Did you come out of it sort of wanting to enact change?

- So when I came back, by doing that process, I realized I had skills that could actually help people who had very little means and that there were things that we could do as architects.

You know, in this case, affordable housing and developing culturally responsive architecture and climate-responsive architecture that would work for very-low-income people.

- [Peder] Glenn is responsible for the internationally recognized design of the Little Big Horn College on the Crow Reservation in Montana, drawing on the thousands of years of history of community-based design and technique of indigenous people.

- We're just facilitating the voices of our own people and other indigenous communities, and trying to to strengthen the voice of our ancestors, and to create a contemporary version of an indigenous architecture that reflects and celebrates our heritage and culture and respects Mother Earth.

(light drum music) - Oh my gosh.

My first billed project.

(women laughing) - It's up!

- [Peder] Wanda Dalla Costa is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree First Nation in Northern Alberta, now professor of architecture at Arizona State University.

She also works with urban indigenous youth to reclaim and learn about their culture, a reversal of the role her mother played as a residential-school survivor.

- Really the most important part of being a teacher is just giving them that space to be able to rethink from a cultural point of view what else could be possible.

And also to give them space to think about how their specific cultural lifeways and traditions and protocols, norms, knowledges that live within our communities, can be integrated into architecture.

- [Peder] Dalla Costa, like all of the architects featured in the film, coming into the industry largely as an outsider eager for change, now respected worldwide and inspiring new generations of indigenous architects, her work and teaching carrying on her ancestors' skill and traditions and driven by Douglas Cardinal, who showed her what was possible.

- I mean, he's a mentor to all of us.

We knew he had a harder path than we did.

You know, we have kind of a difficult path, because all of us feel we are opening the gates to this subject.

But he was the first one to push on it.

It's our duty now to take those gates and open them wider so the next generation has less fight to do.

♪ A way, a way ♪ - [Peder] Peder Myhr for "Inside the Story."

(text whooshes) - During the pandemic, millions of dollars of work was done on the Olympic venues in Lake Placid to prep for the World University Games coming in 2023.

PBS Mountain Lake reporter Jack LaDuke shows us what's new and what to expect.

(text whooshes) (people chattering) (text whooshes) - [Jack] The World University Games, or FISU, will be double the size of the Olympics held here in 1980 with more countries and athletes competing for gold medals.

U.S. athletes appreciate the new and updated winter sports training facilities.

- I've been training in Lake Placid for the last, my goodness, 17 years.

(chuckles) So I've seen the old, and now I'm lucky enough to see the new with everything that ORDA and I Love New York has been contributing to us.

So we're really lucky to have really world-leading facilities to train in.

- [Jack] A 500-foot-long inside push track for training has been installed in the three-story Mountain Pass Lodge.

Spectators can sit in an upstairs lounge and watch athletes shape up to an Olympic challenge.

The updated luge facility has doubled in size, adding new training aspects that can put them on a luge track thousands of miles away yet remaining in Lake Placid.

- The one elevation that you see directly behind me simulates the track start in Beijing.

So this summer, most of our athletes will be working on that particular elevation.

But this facility provides four different elevations that mirror a lot of the other tracks around the world.

So it gives our athletes, depending on which track we're gonna be spending, whether it's the Olympics or world championships, the ability of working their craft off of those particular handles.

- The luge training center's multimillion dollar expansion is also putting athletes ahead of how they previously trained.

The old ramp was not long enough for an athlete to settle into the sled.

This new ramp is long enough for an athlete to completely settle into their sleds.

- For the athlete, it'll give those valuable tenths, hundredths, thousandths of seconds that are needed to improve your start time.

And that's really what it's all about.

The start is the only place where you can actually accelerate the sled in the sport of luge.

Every place else, you're trying not to lose time.

- [Jack] 150 trails and stadium at Mount Van Hoevenberg echoes the pings of bullets hitting their target at the new rifle biathlon range.

- National biathlon team is here now, trained on these roller loops you're seeing at the range.

Bobsled and Skeleton are training on our indoor push track and with our roller fleet of sleds on the combined track.

- [Jack] With all the improvements and upgrading taking place in Lake Placid, many are asking, "Is this the stepping stone "to a third Winter Olympics for Lake Placid?"

- [Announcer] Coming out here today.

- That is, have be the will of the people here.

Because believe me, here the venues are ready for any kind of competition.

If one day, Placid want it to be for the games, I think the infrastructure are ready.

Now is another decision, is a political decision, but technically I think you're ready.

- [Jack] Some World Cup events will be held on the newly finished venues this winter.

In Lake Placid, I'm Jack LaDuke with "WPBS Weekly."

(text whooshes) ♪ Mi, mi, mi, mi, mi ♪ - Get your vocal chords ready.

It's time to sing.

Produced by Sunburst Films in Winnipeg, Canada, a program called "Time to Sing" showcases the inspiring hymns and spirituals along with old time favorites and beloved classics.

The words of each song are displayed on your screen so that you can sing along.

So gather your loved ones, warm up your voice, and get ready.

♪ It's time to sing ♪ (text whooshes) (rhythmic percussion music) (text whooshes) (triumphant orchestral music) - "Shall We Gather at the River?"

is the next song we will sing.

It was written and composed by Robert Lowry on a day late in the Civil War while he lay exhausted from heat.

It was made popular at camp meetings, water baptismal services, and funerals.

I'm sure you'll have memories of it as we sing it.

(upbeat spiritual music) ♪ Shall we gather at the river ♪ ♪ Where bright angels' feet have trod ♪ ♪ With its crystal tide forever ♪ ♪ Flowing by the throne of God ♪ ♪ Yes, we'll gather at the river ♪ ♪ The beautiful, the beautiful river ♪ ♪ Gather with the saints at the river ♪ ♪ That flows by the throne of God ♪ - [Choir Leader] Men!

♪ Ere we reach the shining river ♪ ♪ Lay we every burden down ♪ ♪ Grace our spirits will deliver ♪ ♪ And provide a robe and crown ♪ - [Choir Leader] C'mon.

♪ Yes, we'll gather at the river ♪ ♪ The beautiful, the beautiful river ♪ ♪ Gather with the saints at the river ♪ ♪ That flows by the throne of God ♪ - [Choir Leader] C'mon.

♪ At the smiling of the river ♪ ♪ Mirror of the Savior's face ♪ ♪ Saints, whom death will never sever ♪ ♪ Lift the songs of saving grace ♪ ♪ Yes, we'll gather at the river ♪ ♪ The beautiful, the beautiful river ♪ ♪ Gather with the saints at the river ♪ ♪ That flows by the throne of God ♪ ♪ Yes, we'll gather at the river ♪ ♪ The beautiful, the beautiful river ♪ ♪ Gather with the saints at the river ♪ ♪ That flows by the throne of God ♪ (people applauding) - [Choir Leader] All right.

(text whooshes) - [Stephfond] The series airs Sunday nights at 7:00 p.m. on WPBSTV.

The second season begins September 19th.

(text whooshes) Looking for something else fresh on WPBS?

We've got you covered.

PBS is proud to present "Muhammad Ali," a film by Ken Burns, which debuts right here on WPBS September 19th at 8:00 p.m. We encourage you to mark your calendars and set your DVRs.

Here's a quick preview of the upcoming film about the iconic heavyweight champion who became an inspiration to people everywhere.

(text whooshes) (light chiming music) (rhythmic percussion music) - [Muhammad] I'm here, and I'm showin' the world that you can stay yo'self and get respect from the world.

- There are many, many films about Muhammad Ali.

We think we tell a story in a kind of complete way.

- This film, it's the whole picture.

It's the good, the bad.

It's the inspiring.

It's everything.

(bell rings) - I am the greatest.

- [Ken] I am drawn to boxing when the person and the bouts seem to reflect something larger.

And the person who's doing the fighting is one of the most extraordinary human beings that I have ever, ever met.

- Boxing was his platform that he used to be able to change the world.

- He was a pioneer, he was a revolutionary, a guy known simply as the greatest.

- We talked to a lot of people interested in boxing and Muhammad Ali, Todd Boyd, Gerald Early, the novelist Walter Mosley, a scholar of Islam, Sherman Jackson.

And we interviewed his family, his brother, Rahaman, his daughter, Rasheda, and another daughter, Hana.

- There was a clip where my dad was saying, "You know how your daddy's the greatest?"

- Do you know your daddy's the baddest man in the world?

- I'd never seen that clip before.

And I just, tears was rollin' down my face.

(lively piano music) - Maybe you'll come for the boxing.

Maybe you'll come for the religion.

Maybe you'll come for the politics or the conflict.

But I think you leave with an elevated sense of an amazing American.

- To have that chutzpah and to be a Black man in America was just, it was outlandish.

- Oh, I'm so pretty.

I'll show it to the world.

- [Announcer] "Muhammad Ali" starts September 19th, only on PBS.

- That does it for us this Tuesday evening.

Join us next week for a fresh look "Inside the Stories."

We visit the boxing hall of fame to highlight the life of boxing favorite Muhammad Ali to prepare you for the Ken Burns documentary coming to WPBS.

And is your drinking water in trouble?

Plastic trash in the Great Lakes causes concern.

Also, hundreds of unmarked children's graves in Canada open old wounds and new questions.

All of this and more coming up next week.

Meantime, if you have a story idea you'd like to see us explore, email us at wpbsweekly@wpbstv.org.

Until then, good night, everyone.

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They're proud to support WPBSTV.

Online at carthagesavings.com.

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(upbeat spiritual music) - [Choir Leader] C'mon.

♪ At the smiling of the river ♪ ♪ Mirror of the Savior's face ♪ ♪ Saints, whom death will never sever ♪ ♪ Lift their songs of saving grace ♪ ♪ Yes, we'll gather ♪ (light music)