(gentle music) (wind blowing) - Today, we're at the Pipestone National Monument, and I'm gonna be heading straight to my pit, the quarry.

This will be my first time quarrying by the way.

So I'm a little nervous, but we're gonna see what happens.

- You signed in already?

- I already signed in.

- Okay, sounds good.

- [Alex] Got my safety glasses.

- Good.

You have gloves, boots?

- I don't have gloves.

- Okay, I can give you some gloves if you want, I'd recommend, - Okay, okay, just gonna need gloves.

- There you go.

- Thank you.

- Need those.

And then do you have a wheelbarrow or anything for picking rock?

- I don't have a wheelbarrow because I just assumed you just go by hand by just grabbing all the quartz.

- Okay.

Do you know where Mark's pit is?

- I know where Mark's pit is.

- Okay, just take one of his.

Yeah, because usually it's two out there, so if there's not, call the park and I'll bring one out.

- So as far as I know, I am the youngest carver and now quarrier in my community.

(upbeat music) As a pipestone carver, I've been getting better over time, and you can see my examples.

It's just been slowly evolving of me exploring and adapting and finding new ways to express myself to represent me and the people around me.

Our people have been doing this for thousands of years since the Dakota culture was founded.

- [Interviewer] So this is your first time quarrying, but you've been here before?

Do you want to mention a little bit?

- Yeah, so I did the summer demonstration just right at the gift shop area with all the elders over there.

Right next to the gift shop, we have all these little booths for the carvers, but Pipestone saw my work and they were very impressed.

So it's been roughly a couple months now and I've been really enjoying it.

Just been carving with the elders.

- [Interviewer] So this is the example quarry?

- Yeah, this is the example for visitors to come in and see how deep the quarry can be when we're harvesting our Pipestone.

So you can see it's like roughly eight to 10 feet deep.

Just tell me if you want me to slow down for you.

(upbeat music) When I got my first pipestone, it was from my great aunt.

Her and my grandmother encouraged me to make my first pipe.

And of course being a teenager, I was too afraid to mess up.

So I just paused it, just left it alone.

Started focusing on other passions like paleontology and geology.

And then that block was still sitting there just waiting to get the pipe made.

So when I made my first pipe, it's a little rounded at the bottom.

The bowl is a little off-center from me carving, but it was still a lesson to learn and I was excited to get this going.

I got pretty emotional because I don't know what it was, it was just something that was just, that energy just carried on.

I'm like, this is what you need to do now.

This is something you enjoy.

So I just kept practicing, practicing, all self-taught.

Normally, someone would be out here pointing me, but luckily, I was here months ago getting prepared for that specific pit for me to quarry, which is right over here.

So this pit is very important to me because this is the same pit that my family used to quarry once upon time until the 1970s.

It's been 50 years, yes.

So yeah, we're just gonna go one step at a time.

It's a pretty big honor and step for me to continue on that legacy, follow their steps and get some pipestone and make some of my work.

So my family, they've been all been creative.

They've all been doing indigenous arts, growing up for their careers.

This is my mom, when she was younger, I think she did modeling for three to four years.

My grandmother was a painter.

She did a little bit of carving too.

And then my great-grandfather was a carver.

So my great-grandfather was Johnny Crooks.

He passed away before I was born.

And this is just one sample from my collection.

I would say I'm roughly fifth to sixth generation of the pipestone carving family.

So I guess all I gotta do now is just quarry.

All right.

All right, so here in the Pipestone National Monument, Dakota people have been quarrying here for at least seven to 8,000 years.

Before pipestone was discovered, pipes used to have been made out of bone, like deer and elk or even bison, until eventually they found this specific spot with pipestone sticking out the surface.

And they realized how important the stone is and how soft the material is that they replaced what they were using pipes before into the pipestones that you'll see today.

So right underneath all these quartz here, this pink section right here is gonna be where I need to quarry.

This is the pipestone I need.

So that is my target.

(stone clanging) Around 2 million years ago, pipestone used to have been clay once upon a time.

And there was so much iron that got mixed into that clay settlement that it became more of this reddish color that you see here.

And this here became fossilized or petrified, whatever you wanna call it, that's a little bit of a harder stone, but still soft enough for you to carve.

Catlinite is the scientific name for this specific stone.

And there's many different colors.

But here in Pipestone, it's the only color you can find with this color.

And it's important to our people because in our Dakota culture and along with Lakota and Oglala people, that the color red represent the blood and flesh of our ancestors.

(gentle music) Well, I don't really have a description of the disability I have, but the disability is coming up right now.

(laughs) I had trouble reading, I had trouble speaking growing up when I was a little kid.

Just how life works, it's just how the brain was formed.

So I can read fine now, but when I was a little kid, sometimes the word becomes a blur, maybe backwards.

But there has been a lot of trauma from that.

I have been bullied, I have been harassed, I have been judged differently just because people didn't understand what my condition was.

I normally don't talk about that because it's kind of a rough road for that part of life.

But I don't regret it.

I really don't.

(laughs) Yeah, once I started hitting towards middle school and high school, that's where I started having better understanding and better learning of reading and speaking.

And it's all thanks to my families and people I trust.

Okay, so anyway.

(pickaxe clanging) (shovel clanging) I'm just trying to save as much scraps as I can just because you can make jewelry or trinkets out of them.

(rocks shuffling) Trying to get this crack here removed so I have easy access for all these pipestones here, so.

Yes, I am a indigenous nerd.

How's that?

(upbeat music) My first time I saw this movie, "Jurassic Park," I was three years old.

My cousin just discreetly was just like, "Okay, don't tell your mom that we're gonna watch this, but we're gonna watch 'Jurassic Park.'"

So I watched that with him, and ever since then, I've just been obsessed with movies and learning about our past paleontology world of dinosaurs.

I was completely obsessed.

It just changed my whole life after that.

(dramatic music) (pickaxe clanging) Whew, I am out of shape.

- [Interviewer] Did you have to do any of this when you were like digging up dinosaur bones?

- Yeah, I had to do this when I was working with paleontologists in South Dakota and Colorado and Utah, just about almost everywhere.

- [Interviewer] So you've done like this kind of rock work before?

- Not necessarily with this stone here, but we don't normally use like big tools like this unless we really have to dig deep.

Which, in some cases, we do for excavating triceratops.

But most of our fossil is gonna be found on the surface.

Just probably nick here and nick here, see what comes out, because all I'm really trying to hope for is just something, nice big slab just to slide out.

Because as you can see, like in here, these are like layers of the pipestone.

So I'm just crossing my fingers that one big chunk would be like, “And were off.” There we go.

Well, pretty decent piece.

(hammer clanging) It almost feels like I can just pull this out in one sheet, but, hmm.

Still learning.

Interesting.

Interesting.

This top layer is very soft, but the bottom layer is gonna be the hardest thing to carve for pipe.

Just how it was preserved.

Yeah, so the two-tone, this is an upper layer of the pipestone, and that's where you get these orange spots and speckles all over this piece.

For the top surface of the pipestone quarry, when people are removing that specific pipestone, you might have a bunch of these peachy orange spots all over, it almost looked like someone grabbed like a wet paintbrush and just went, pssh, pssh.

And I consider that the soft surface or the top layer be very soft, I mean, but it's a very fragile piece to work on, because you were to trip your hand or drop it, it would just, pssh, gone, right?

And then you got the medium layer that will have little less of that orange speckles and more of that rich red, but it's still soft enough to make your pipe.

And that's kind of more of what most people desired for making their pipes.

And then the bottom layer is for the people who really want to make their pipes but not worry about breaking, that's the most dense and hardest of all pipestone.

Ooh, that's a good one.

Yeah.

There we go.

Thin piece, but it's a nice long piece.

I'm getting some pipestone, but nothing too grand yet.

But this is my first time, so I am not complaining, any piece is a win for me.

- [Interviewer] Did you expect it to be this hard?

Like tell me what your thoughts are.

- Yeah, I expect it to be this hard.

So it's gonna probably take me a little while just to get some progress.

But hey, I got the whole month booked, so.

I think there's at least 30 quarries here from this trail all the way to the other side of the visitor center.

- [Worker] How did quarrying go?

- Exhausting.

- Are you sore?

- Yeah, I mean it's my first time, so I got some nice chunks, but they're not like big slabs yet.

So just trying to... - Yes, get the experience.

- Trying to get the baby steps.

- Good.

Did you have proper shoes on?

- I have Vans.

- Okay, well no, that's kinda proper.

Okay, so there's a guy, he wore flip-flops.

I'm like, "Aaron, what are you doing?"

I know, swinging the sledgehammer- - Okay, so like I'm swinging the quarry, right?

- Yes.

(worker gasps) - Have safety glasses on?

- I got the glasses.

- Yep, gloves?

- I did get gloves, but I had to take them off from the sun, and that's what got me.

So I was like, okay, back in we go.

So don't worry- - It's a good experience.

I know you'll be out there doing it again.

- It's gonna be a whole October.

I got the whole pit reserved for me.

- Yeah, the spirits are there, they're helping you.

(gentle music) - I do teaching with the Lower Sioux Agency to get children and young adults to get their first bowl made because it's important to get the culture passed down.

So it's not just me when I'm 60 years old to be the last carver of Lower Sioux because I want to have as many people as I can just to pass this knowledge down, and hopefully they pass this knowledge to their family members and keep the legacy going.

So the pipe, it represents the flesh and blood of our ancestors.

So this is the oldest thing I have in my family.

One of the original copies they printed during the execution of my fourth great grandfather.

He was part of the Dakota War, but him and his friend, Little Six, fled up to Canada to escape the battle.

And they were legally kidnapped by the Canadian troopers to be escorted back to Minnesota to get hung in Fort Snelling.

Just like the many other men that were hanged in Mankato, his body wasn't even recovered after the execution.

It was taken for science for research.

We just don't know where his body is.

We use sacred tobacco to blow in.

We do it for Sun Dance or for ceremonial use.

And that's for us to connect to the Great Spirit and our ancestors.

There's different types of ways of carving the pipe.

The elbow pipes, that would be for females.

And then the longer pipes would be for males.

And it could also be for sharing and gathering for ceremonial purpose use.

All right, well these are my samples here, and this is very cool.

My T-Rex, it's a paleontology pipe.

The teeth here, these are black pipestones.

And then just for smoking, it's just gonna be right in the mouth.

These are my first turtles is turtles resting on a log.

This took me about four days to carve, but after I got done beeswaxing this, I went back with this needle right here and went back and started etching in those patterns.

And their stem is right here.

This is made out of sumac, and this is my very first human.

I was practicing on human faces and this is my first attempt.

And when I did this in pipestone, I got so many visitors saying, "Is this Crazy Horse?"

No, no, he's just a medicine man.

Speaking of which, this is Crazy Horse.

When I worked on Crazy Horse, that wasn't like something I wanted to do.

That was just, I just saw the blank canvas pipestone in my hand that was given to me and it just said, "Make me a Crazy Horse."

I'm like, okay, I'm gonna start working on the Crazy Horse now.

This is probably my magnum opus right here, my best work.

I guess time will find out.

So, you guys ready to get messy?

All right, wanna make sure there's no cracks in it.

Just a little bit right there.

All right.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) I normally will grab a big file like this and get this nice and flat so I have a nice blank canvas.

And then I'll start grabbing my Sharpie and I'll do sort of a rough quick outline.

There we go, so that is my rough shape of my plain pipe.

Next phase would be just cutting off the blocks.

And I do not waste these little guys.

Usually you can make small little jewelry or totem pieces.

So after we got our rough cut, next phase, we'll be grabbing a big file.

Nice big fat one.

And yeah, it's just flatting up the surface.

Because eventually, once I get most of my corners done, it will start looking sort of close to a pipe.

And now unfortunately, you see this crack right here, I accidentally dropped it.

So this would not be a usable piece.

But it's great for demonstrating for me to start grabbing a smaller file like this and start working on my corners to get it more rounded.

And there is no shortcut.

Take your time.

Since I started practicing pipestone, I've been practicing for three years now.

Three years of experience, and that's all just self-taught and people coaching and cheering me on just getting better.

(upbeat music) This riffler file, I got this from eBay, and you can only get this in Italy for carving marble.

We're at this part of the detail work, I finally get to see what the pipe is actually gonna look like when we're finished.

We're just gonna take our time and go with the flow.

When youre working with pipestone, you're gonna get messy.

All right, now we're going to to the finish.

When it comes to sanding, there's many different grits of sandpaper.

You go from 60 all the way down to 1,500.

Should also mention that sanding is gonna be the most time-consuming part of making a pipe.

And each grit is gonna be a little bit more softer.

You can tell how smooth that is already.

All right, look how shiny that is, almost like a mirror.

I normally don't do this, but for demonstrating this drilling, do it just like my great-grandfather and his dad did.

This is a hand drill, and you can just take your time and go with the flow there.

Okay.

This is also pretty time-consuming right here, but that's okay.

As long as I don't make any cracks on the way down, I'm perfectly happy using this tool.

I'm a little bit off-center on this one, but that's okay because I can use the file and expand it this way.

Yeah, I'm getting a little pink, but it comes right off.

All right.

Hey.

- Hi.

- Hello.

- Can I borrow one of your pans?

- What's going on?

- I'm gonna beeswax my pipes for demonstrating.

- Like a saute pan?

- Similar to this.

(people chattering) You can see how the beeswax is absorbing into the pipe.

This is pretty much done, unless I want to come back and start etching some like patterns and flowers.

But I'm just gonna keep it as simple as is.

(gentle music) I learned so much from pipestone and home and people who have supported me, encouraged me, pushed me.

All right.

The people who I get motivated would be my family.

They had me when my dad was 23 and my mom was 20, because they've been with me from square one.

Getting oils in the eyes again.

(laughs) All right.

- Looks great.

- Yeah, I think we're good.

And that's pretty much the finished pipe.

(bright music) - [Narrator] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yakel-Julene on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

A better future starts now.

West Central Initiative empowers communities with resources, funding, and support for a thriving region.

More at wcif.org.

(upbeat music)