the following program is a production of pioneer â public television. [music] narrator: in this episode of postcards. he said, "the best bluegrass festival in the country, bar none, is in minnesota." so the language has been there all the time. it's just a matter of us coming to the language.
the noise you know and the activity in the shop is, i refer to it as like a beehive. there's a lot of people running around, very busy. [postcards theme music] announcer: this program on pioneer public television is funded by the minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund, with money from the vote of the people of minnesota
on november fourth, 2008. additional support provided by mark and margaret-yackel juleen, in honor of shalom hill farm, a non-profit, rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near windom in southwestern minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org. the arrowwood resort and conference center. your ideal choice for minnesota resorts offering luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf,
darling reflections spa, big splash waterpark, and much more. alexandria, minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great location for an event. explorealex.com. easy to get to, hard to leave. narrator: at the bluegrass and old time music festival in richmond, musicians gather from far around to celebrate
american roots music. the minnesota bluegrass and oldtime music festival is a four day event. we start on a thursday night with our mainstage act and we'll end on sunday. the first festival was 34 years ago and it was held up at the wild wood campground up at taylor's falls and it moved to zimmerman, minnesota, for a number of years and now here for the
last, gosh, 12 years i believe, 12 or 13 years. my name is brett day and i'm the mainstage coordinator for the minnesota bluegrass and oldtime music festival and i've been volunteering for the organization for 26 years. my task is to get the mainstage ready for the mainstage acts, the bands, each year and then coordinate the mc's and generally see that
everything runs smoothly on the stage. one microphone and one song? ⶠi dreamed last night i was a crawling and ⶠⶠcreepin', dreamed last night i was a crawlin' and ⶠⶠa creepin', dreamed last night i was a crawlin' and ⶠⶠa creepin', and i slipped in the room where mary was ⶠⶠa sleepin' and i ain't gonna do it no more. ⶠthe organization built the stage and it's just again an all volunteer organization.
we joined with el rancho manana, one of the largest campgrounds in the state of minnesota, and it's just north of richmond minnesota and north of cold spring. and it's just a beautiful, beautiful camp with just acres and acres of camping available for those who want to come out and listen to some great music. ...one, two, three this group, blue grass firelight,
we're all students at east tennessee state university in johnson city, tennessee, and we're all majors in bluegrass, oldtime and country music . it is the only major of its type anywhere in the world and we, we all have a deep love for this music and its history and its future and we want to you know, help carry on the tour. this is one of the three healthiest bluegrass
associations in the world, not just the united states, and it's just a prize. we'll have six to 7,000 people come to this festival and they're so driven and the energy is electric. there's four days of nonstop jamming. if you can get sleep in that's a good thing. but the music is so compelling, it's driving you. very nice, very nice.
i'm playing an open back, claw hammered banjo. this is a cobbled together version of what the slaves brought over from africa. when we brought the slaves from africa, we didn't pay any attention to their religion or their cultures. we simply scooped em up and brought them over here. we didn't realize that there were 62 plucked lutes that were present over there and when the
slaves got together over here to celebrate, they started cobbling instruments together because they were so homesick for their music. so this could be any of 62 plucked lutes from africa. we call it the american instrument. it did take this form over here, but its initial roots were way in the dark country of africa. when i was a kid i always thought i'd have to go out to west virginia to go to a bluegrass
festival and yeah this is like the best kept secret because many years back in, a friend of mine was talking about this and he says, "oh no, you don't have to go anywhere, he said, "the best bluegrass festival in the country, bar none, is in minnesota, and it's this festival that we're at right now. we bring in major talent from you know all over the country. you know we've had, you name the bluegrass group,
we've had em here so it is the who's who of bluegrass has been on our stage. what we have back here is a quilt that was made for the 30th anniversary of this festival and it was to celebrate it, and it shows some of the headline bands that have played here in the last 30 years. people like alison krause, the osborne brothers, jaddie crow, and doyle lawson, and jim and jessie and...
[radio changing] [on radio] and you're here, and they are here in minnesota, [on radio] i think that's pretty cool. [on radio] here in minnesota [on radio] ready to entertain you, so... i have a pretty small, low power, fm transmitter that we plug into the board and then we transmit through a short distance of the festival everything that's going on on the,
on the stage. a bluegrass festival is way different than any other kind of festival in that probably 85-90% of the people that are here are musicians one way or another. you talk about family friendly and this is about as family friendly as it gets so that's exactly it. [applause] narrator: do you have an
idea for the postcards team? email us, postcards@pioneer.org. narrator: we visit dakota wicohan in morton, where we learn how the dakota way of life is remembered, reclaimed and reconnected. for me, i always say you know, i'm dakota and so it's a part of me and without the language, i'm not whole. i can't be myself and be completely self determined
until i figure out who i am and i think the, the whole power within the language is sacred so it's really something that you don't take lightly when you start learning. my name is glen wasicuna and here at dakota wicohan i teach the dakota language. it's not so much me teaching them that they come here to learn the language because they feel that a part of them is missing.
there's a ton of policies that were meant to eradicate the dakota people in general and they used a number of efforts but one of them was boarding schools that really had a significant impact on why there are few speakers today. and so my grandma and my grandpa and many others of that generation went to boarding school and were discouraged from using the language. in some of those cases it was a negative experience,
and so out of protecting their children and their grandchildren, that language was not passed down. it's up to us as the dakota people to start speaking the language. it's just a matter of us coming to, to the language. anybody can learn it. there's people at the university who aren't
dakota and they're learning it and they want to become teachers, which i think is beautiful. i have some of my classmates come down and help me teach because i'm a teacher apprentice they're the same level so then i have more people in the room to help teach and there's more language being conversed. [speaking dakota] glen's our teacher and he told us
to come with a story so we all came up with a story that was personal so, it comes from our hearts so then we will remember it more. and i feel like the storytelling in that aspect of learning, how it's personal and relevant to you, that's how you remember it. so we're all learning to kind of reclaim what our stories our and practicing doing that.
so basically i told you a story about my parents, how they met. they were in california, but they were both from here and happened to meet. he went by in his car and he had a minnesota license plate. so it's kind of a funny story. we don't have like textbooks or anything. it's an oral history. it was always passed down, and so that's why it's
important that we always say you know, just teach a sentence, teach a word, teach anything to anybody, the language because that's ensuring and that's securing that's going to be passed down and that's gonna keep going. what's in the language that makes it important to an identity you know, and i can only talk about my personal identity with it is that it's what i grew up with.
my grandma was a first speaker so i heard her speaking, my aunts and uncle were speakers. it just brings that sense of identity back to you of who you are and where you came from. the other aspects of the culture that we try and bring here. in the shutonka program we have the horse lessons. you know we use the horse to teach the kids leadership and also their sense
of belonging there as well. so we have a lot of different programs that bring in that leadership aspect and that identity. i'm a wikoska and what we do is when i was a wichina, which is a young girl, i was taught by another wikoska and i was taught like the language and some of the culture. the main thing i like to do in this program is teaching the young girls the leadership skills and
the language and the culture because i know that it's being passed down to a younger generation that can keep it going. so wikoska is young women, koska is young men so the beginning of the programs, there's a lot of grants and a lot of funding for making girls become young leaders but there wasn't a lot for men, for boys to have programming. so we found some money, so that one's prospering too,
the wichina and they're working with ryan and they're doing awesome things. [drums, singing] so they've been learning songs for almost a year now and they've gotten a lot, very far and the community's really respectful to them because they go to powwows and they go to different things and they do the honor songs.
so they're doing the same things, just for men, and for boys. [drums, music] what we do in the evening time when we gather with our families is we provide a meal, we have a meal, you always have to have a meal you know, food brings everybody in and so we provide a meal and we say a prayer. we have our meal prayer in dakota or even in english
sometimes, and then our dta's, we have four dta's that teach a language lesson. the thing about this word is it's a whole sentence. [speaking dakota] i am dakota. and after the language lesson, we all circle up again and we sing the thank you song and then we let the families know what the next activities are and just give them updates and welcome back for the next following week.
remember, reclaim and reconnect, yeah. those are the three areas that we work on and the remembering part is a part of our video, our documentary, and our reconnect are all of our programs that we have with our youth and families, and then our reconnect piece is with our newsletter, our facebook page, and families and the language and culture. [singing in dakota]
being dakota means a lot of things like it's not so much learning how to drum or how to sing, it's all, it's all part of a bigger picture. there's a lot of things that come into play in these, these young people come here. we try to instill a pride of being dakota and i think that's the most important part. one time during an interview for a grant,
one of the guys asked if why we do the program and why we do the dakota 38 memorial ride is if we're trying to shame other races and i think that kind of offended me a little cause we don't do things here to shame other people or to make other people feel bad about the past. what we do here is more to move on from the past and to continue growing so i guess the one thing i'd want someone to know is that we don't do this
because it's what we're told we have to do. we do this because it's important to us and because we want to remember things and learn from them, not to make other people feel bad for it. narrator: visit pioneer.org for more information on postcards and other pioneer productions. narrator: the busy factory floor at american surplus
in montevideo can barely keep up with demand as they usher in a new era of ice-fishing. the days of fishing out of the old wooden boxes are over. there's a time and a place for that but we've taken it a step further. ice fishing has been a part of minnesota culture for many, many years. started out with the shacks and the shanties
and the villages like you've seen in the movie fargo. an ice castle is, they call it a portable fish house on wheels. we take them out ice fishing obviously in the wintertime, drill holes in the ice, catch fish. in the summertime people use them for camping, in the fall they use them as a hunting shack, overflow at their cabin.
we were making storage sheds before and we got a call from our dealer up in millaca hunting & freight to build a fish house. so we built one and it was sold before it even got up there, and that's where it all started. we had no idea that ice fishing, ice castles, would become what it is today. it's, it's crazy. we built 2100 last year, now i think we're on pace
to build 2,500 this year. so, it's nuts. [shop noises] the noise and the activity in the shop is, i refer to it like a beehive. everybody has a certain job that they're specialized in, and they do a fantastic job of getting it done. like i said they're specialized in it,
they do ten of them a day. the noise gets up there, the decibal level is pretty high with a lot of saws and compressors running and nail guns and everything like that. it's a very, very busy place. to get certified to be an rv, we had to apply with rvia, the recreational vehicle industry association, which means we have to follow certain codes, certain safety codes,
window size, that type of things. having that rvi certification has definitely been a benefit for our business. our business has quadrupled since then. and that ability to go into campgrounds and to be considered to be an rv, and also to be financed like an rv. that opened a whole new world for us to get that certification.
what's so special about an ice castle? well let's take a look inside. this is our eight by 16 signature series, it's one of the top of the line ones. so we have cedar interior, it's tongue and groove cedar interior. this one has, it comes equipped with a boat seat. it's got skylights, led lighting, satellite dish, stove, microwave,
sleeping for five, this folds down into a bed. there's storage down here, plenty of storage in these cabinets. we're famous for the camo interiors. the ladies like that a lot. this one come equipped with a little bathroom area. we of course use the bucket method so at least you have some sort of privacy.
well we just had our first fishing contest, ice castle classic. it turned out very well. we had over 3,200 people so looking forward to next year's, getting in more vendors. should be, should be a success. the winning fish was a 16 pound buffalo carp. there was only five fish caught, we had 50 prizes, so we just did a drawing for the
rest of the prizes, but we did give away all the prizes that we promised people we would. it was, it was nice. a lot of the response i got to having it here on our home lake was you know it's about time to have something local, something close to home, local, you know like a lot of our local people like to ice fish. if you go out to lac qui parle,
there's a lot of kinds of little dotted villages out there. so it was nice to have something close to home in southwestern minnesota. i really enjoy it, it's important to me, i really enjoy my job. i, i use the product, i have an ice castle, i've had three of them now. it's a lot of fun, it's something new everyday.
we keep a lot of people employed in this area. this is, we're one of the larger employers in the area, i think that's very important for rural minnesota to have companies like ours out here. working for the company you know it really fits my lifestyle, it's what my hobbies are, myself and my family, like i said we're big into fishing, we love fishing and outdoors,
it's a perfect fit. i love working with my family you know it's, i get to see my dad everyday. long hours though, long hours but i don't mind it. it's, it's fun. ⶠhave you ever been to richmond ⶠⶠin november, when the cold virginia rain ⶠⶠis pouring down? ⶠⶠfriends i'm here to tell you it's no pleasure, â¶
ⶠwhen you're all alone and a stranger to the town. ⶠⶠdon't take me wrong i do like east virginia, ⶠⶠand richmond's full of hospitality. ⶠⶠexcept for one virginia girl i know of, ⶠⶠwhose made a perfect love wreck out of me. ⶠⶠblue virginia blue, there ain't no blue like the ⶠⶠblue virginia blue. ⶠⶠthere's no girls in the whole wide world can break ⶠⶠyour heart like virginia girls, â¶
ⶠand there ain't no blue like the blue virginia blue. ⶠannouncer: this program on pioneer public television is funded by the minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund. with money from the vote of the people of minnesota ["blue virginia blues" continues] captioned by pioneer public television 2014
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