Canistrumology (BASKET WEAVING. YES, BASKET WEAVING) with James C. Bamba AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Ologies with Alie Ward

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Episode: Canistrumology (BASKET WEAVING. YES, BASKET WEAVING) with James C. Bamba

Author: Alie Ward
Duration: 01:06:43

Episode Shownotes

Thorny leaves! Embarrassing imports! Basket gossip! Making cool stuff from invasive vines! Renowned weaver and teacher, James C. Bamba, connected more deeply with his Mariana Island heritage through weaving and shares how you know when plant fiber is ready, the anatomy of a coconut tree, how to look a gift

basket in the mouth, the baskets that he cherishes the most, how to design with your mind, what he thinks about when he’s weaving, basket jokes he hates the most, and when learning another culture’s craft is appropriate or appropriation. Follow James on InstagramA donation went to Sagan Kotturan ChamoruMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: Ethnoecology (ETHNOBOTANY/NATIVE PLANTS), Dendrology (TREES), Indigenous Fashionology (NATIVE CLOTHING), Indigenous Cuisinology (NATIVE COOKING), Indigenous Pedology (SOIL SCIENCE), Heliology (THE SUN/ECLIPSES), Neuroendocrinology (SEX & GENDER), Ergopathology (BURNOUT), Corvid Thanatology (CROW FUNERALS)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow Ologies on Instagram and BlueskyFollow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTokEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake ChaffeeManaging Director: Susan HaleScheduling Producer: Noel DilworthTranscripts by Aveline Malek Website by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Summary

In this episode of 'Ologies with Alie Ward', James C. Bamba, a distinguished basket weaver from the Mariana Islands, shares his Chamorro heritage and the intricate techniques of basket weaving. He discusses the cultural significance of his craft, experiences in learning from his uncle, and challenges in bridging traditional and modern methods. Bamba emphasizes the importance of material selection and preparation, the spiritual aspect of the craft, and the distinction between locally made and mass-produced baskets. Additionally, he addresses cultural exchange versus appropriation, humor in weaving, and the impact of climate change on traditional practices.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Canistrumology (BASKET WEAVING. YES, BASKET WEAVING) with James C. Bamba) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_04
Oh, hey, it's your neighbor clipping his nails on the porch again. Allie Ward, let's venture across the sea. Let's talk about weaving, shall we?

00:00:08 Speaker_04
One thing I love is when you think an episode may have nothing to do with your life, and then before you know it, you're either obsessed with it or you have to pull over and contemplate the way you go about your whole existence. So get ready.

00:00:18 Speaker_04
This is one of them. So this ologist was brought to my attention by another ologist, the charming Corbett thanatologist, Dr. Kayleigh Swift, who joined us for an episode years ago on crow funerals.

00:00:28 Speaker_04
And she is based on Tinian, which is a tiny island in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific. She's doing bird work and truly living her best life. And she emailed me saying, you got to talk to this guy.

00:00:42 Speaker_04
He is one of the best basket weavers in all of the ocean. And immediately, I found that at least one time in the literature, someone has used the word canistrumology from the Latin for wicker basket. So I'm in.

00:00:56 Speaker_04
Now, I thought wicker, by the way, was just a type of plant. But no, it just means something woven from plant reeds or fibers or sticks. But we're expanding on this ology to include the gorgeously

00:01:08 Speaker_04
intricate work of, in this case, the Pacific Islands, which feature typically angular, geometric, and almost like impossibly tidy methods of weaving. And they can be all one color of grassy green, or they can be faded golden,

00:01:25 Speaker_04
or they may have patterns in darker colors or checkerboards. And this ologist makes traditional baskets for food, for chicken laying, for rice pouches, for coconut leaf fans and hats and fisherman's baskets and fine art figurines.

00:01:40 Speaker_04
So, can you make anything useful or museum-worthy with only plants and your hands? Well, this guy can, and he teaches college-level courses on the methods and the cultural significance of making cool shit with plants.

00:01:55 Speaker_04
So he's about to get you pumped for this with his silky voice and his chill vibe. But first, thank you to the patrons who submitted questions for this episode.

00:02:02 Speaker_04
You too can submit yours at patreon.com slash ologies and join that for just a scant dollar a month.

00:02:08 Speaker_04
Thank you to everyone who leaves a review, too, as I read them all, and they truly help this show stay in the top five or so science podcasts out there. So thank you for that. To prove I read them all, I thank you each week by reading one.

00:02:21 Speaker_04
This one is from Jillers, who wrote, do you like anything? You'll love this. This is my favorite podcast. They write, I inevitably go from, okay, I guess I'll learn about rats to, did you know, being my friends and family. Chillers, thank you for that.

00:02:37 Speaker_04
Thanks for being a glitter cannon of support. So onto the episode. This ologist has been at this craft for decades, learning the traditional Chamorro ways of his ancestors of the Mariana Islands. Mariana Islands, side note, are in the Western Pacific.

00:02:52 Speaker_04
They're close to the Philippines. They're kind of right under Japan on a map. They're far, far west of Hawaii, which is far, far west of the lower 48 states of America.

00:03:03 Speaker_04
So we'll get to his history, but he has recently moved to Oahu, Hawaii to complete his degree in botany at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. And we spoke from his new apartment there.

00:03:12 Speaker_04
And later this week, I'll also bring you another Native Islander botany episode in the form of a field trip. So keep your ears open for that.

00:03:20 Speaker_04
Now, sink in for a deep look at different styles of teaching, weaving with invasive vines, how to know when a plant fiber is ready to make stuff with, the anatomy of a coconut tree, how to look a gift basket in the mouth.

00:03:33 Speaker_04
what you're really getting at import stores, the baskets that he cherishes the most, how to design with your mind, what he thinks about when he's weaving, the basket jokes he hates the most, the thorniest days on the job, changes in the environment, and when is learning another culture's craft appropriate or appropriation.

00:03:52 Speaker_04
With world-renowned basket weaver, artisan, mentor, educator, botanist, and chemistromologist, James Cruz Bamba.

00:04:20 Speaker_01
James Wamba, he and him.

00:04:23 Speaker_04
And you were on Luda or Roda for a while, but where are you originally from? Where were you born? Just a quick siren warning in this episode. It's us. It's not a cop behind you, probably, but we've cut around and as best we can.

00:04:39 Speaker_01
I am originally from the island of Guam or Guahan, as we call it in the indigenous language. But I am born in the United Kingdom, in Scotland. So an islander twice through, I suppose.

00:04:56 Speaker_04
What were your folks doing in Scotland?

00:05:00 Speaker_01
So my, like many people from the Marianas Islands, my father was in the United States military. He served in the Navy. And it just so happened that he had got stationed there. And I was happened to be born there. Yeah.

00:05:14 Speaker_04
James says that as many military families do, they moved around a lot. And for a while, he lived on the Florida panhandle in a military town, even developing a little bit of a Southern accent.

00:05:25 Speaker_04
At what part of your life did you start connecting more to your Chamorro history and your family's culture?

00:05:32 Speaker_01
You know, that's a really good question because at a very young age, growing up in the South, I was one of only like four people, well, at that time I said brown people, but I think now we say people of color.

00:05:47 Speaker_01
And I would ask my mom why we look different, you know, because it's a majority white and black community down there. And so my mom said, you're Chamorro. And I go, what's that? And then she said, yes, we're called Chamorro. We're from Guam.

00:06:01 Speaker_01
She explained that we had our own language, so from an early age, I would ask her how to say things in Chamorro.

00:06:07 Speaker_01
She'd get a little frustrated because English is my first language, and it's weird hearing this child who sounds Southern try to speak Chamorro. According to the elders, the manamuko, it's a little painful. It hurts the ears, they say. Yeah.

00:06:28 Speaker_04
But by mid-kindergarten, James and his family were back in the Mariana Islands. And he ended up finishing high school there before starting college and eventually joining the military in the late 90s.

00:06:38 Speaker_04
Your weaving of baskets predates that by a couple of years. It's been almost 30 years for you. I understand that your uncle was the first to introduce you to this. And can you tell me a little bit about that discovery?

00:06:53 Speaker_01
Oh, so the legend goes. Well, so the story goes is that it's a little bit sad, but my grandmother fell ill and she was taken to, you know, the hospital.

00:07:07 Speaker_01
While she was there, my uncle made her like this coconut leaf basket and put fruits and vegetables in it as like a get well present, get well gift. Somebody claimed that the basket at the hospital.

00:07:19 Speaker_01
And so I never got to see that basket in particular, but my mom was telling me about it and I was amazed and confused because we only saw those things really at like parties and during this thing we had called Chamorro Day.

00:07:34 Speaker_01
It's kind of like Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month concept, except it was only a day back in the 90s. And so I talked to my mom about it and she said, oh, your uncle Pedro, your Uncle Pete, made it for your grandma. And I said, where is it?

00:07:52 Speaker_01
And she goes, oh, somebody took it. They wanted it.

00:07:55 Speaker_04
James said he got up the courage to approach his Uncle Pete, who is a widow without any kids, who lived in the next village over.

00:08:03 Speaker_04
So the teenage James asked Uncle Pedro to spend some time hanging out to teach him how to weave such beautiful baskets in the Chamorro way. He was a shy kid, so this was kind of intimidating for James.

00:08:15 Speaker_04
I imagine, you know, you're, let's see, 15 at the time. I imagine that for an elder who's been doing this for a while, it's gotta be hard to keep up with how fast their hands are going, right?

00:08:30 Speaker_01
Well, that and the fact that in traditional Chamorro pedagogy, we don't, like, handhold and spoon feed. We just do something and say, okay, you wanna learn? Okay, watch. Oh, and be quiet, by the way. Don't talk.

00:08:47 Speaker_01
The first visit, he just told me to go and get coconut leaves. You know, bring materials so I can teach you. He's not going to climb a tree for me. So, okay, fast forward. I went and got leaves. They were the wrong kind.

00:08:58 Speaker_01
He didn't say, James, this is the wrong type of coconut leaf. Go get X, Y, and Z. He said, that's wrong. That's all he said. And then he said a word in Chamorro that I don't know because at that time I wasn't yet really fluent in the language.

00:09:16 Speaker_01
I go home, tell my dad, he goes, Oh, what word did he say? And so I butchered that word and my dad laughs. And then I don't know if you're noticing a theme, but there's very discouraging theme, but my dad goes, Oh, he wants binga.

00:09:31 Speaker_01
and I go, what is a binga? And he goes, no, not binga, binga. And I go, okay, what's a binga? And he goes, well, binga is the young leaf that's like yellowish green. He didn't want these ratty leaves that you picked.

00:09:45 Speaker_04
So this binga.

00:09:46 Speaker_01
No, not binga, binga.

00:09:48 Speaker_04
Is a more soft and pliable leaf. And it's usually free of wind and insect damage. So James set off.

00:09:55 Speaker_01
And I went and got this thing. It's a whole process. He looks at it and goes, you didn't tala it. And I go, what's a tala? And he goes, you don't know what tala is? And I go, no, I don't. And he goes, ah, you know, like with disappointment.

00:10:10 Speaker_01
And then he says, go put it in the sun for two hours and come back.

00:10:15 Speaker_01
And so basically I went back after two hours and then this began my introduction into traditional Chamorro pedagogy and how we like to teach and the methodology that is employed by my people. And so basically he said, OK, I'm going to teach you.

00:10:35 Speaker_01
And then I said, OK, great. So then he whips out this buck knife that I never knew he carried. And it was one of the larger, those ones that you see old men carrying.

00:10:46 Speaker_01
And he opened this folding buck knife, proceeded to weave a basket in like, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes, which to me felt like forever. And he was done. And he says, okay, so do you know how to do it now? I said, wait, you didn't teach me.

00:11:03 Speaker_01
You just wove one. I think that's called demonstrating. And he goes, yeah, I showed you how to do it. He said, so go home and try. And if you can't do it, come back. And I went home and I tried and I didn't do it. And then I went back.

00:11:21 Speaker_01
And that was the beginning of my journey as a weaver or cultural practitioner from the Marianas.

00:11:29 Speaker_04
How long did it take you before you had any semblance of a basket?

00:11:33 Speaker_01
I would say, you know, within a month or two of pestering my uncle Pedro and wasting coconut leaves day in and day out with these horrible monstrosities, I actually ran into somebody who still had a basket from the mid to late 90s that I wove and gave to them.

00:11:57 Speaker_01
I told them to burn it or bury it put it in a lockbox in a Swiss bank and throw away the key. And they go, why? This is your history. I was like, oh my gosh, I can only imagine what it looks like.

00:12:14 Speaker_04
I feel like everyone who's ever made like a YouTube video probably feels that way also. Everyone cringes at their old poems, but that's growth and it's never as bad as you think.

00:12:25 Speaker_04
But, you know, I'm listening to you and this kind of harrowing way of learning. Is that part of the reason why you make such great tutorials online?

00:12:35 Speaker_00
I'm going to show you guys a couple of things. that you can make on your own with palm leaves. I'm just making one real quick just to show you.

00:12:44 Speaker_04
Because your Instagram is full of these really detailed and compassionate and wonderful demonstrations and tutorials of how to do what you do. Does that factor in at all? Does your history factor in at all?

00:12:59 Speaker_01
I think it does because, you know, being born overseas, existing and growing up in a predominantly white middle class school system, and then coming back to Guam and then adjusting to that culture and seeing how things are done there, and then how Western

00:13:24 Speaker_01
systems view and execute education, right? And then how we do it, right? And I swear there is a benefit to this PTSD inducing, like generational trauma pedagogy of the Chamorro people that really hones your observational skills.

00:13:45 Speaker_01
Like I will credit my people for their teaching methods that it really makes you an observer and very observant and very particular about what you pay attention to.

00:13:57 Speaker_01
And then I think, you know, you bringing up the Instagram on my IG page with my video tutorials. So early on, I started to try and bridge the gap between traditional Chamorro methods and Western methods.

00:14:11 Speaker_01
And I, you know, like documentation too, we're a predominantly oral tradition in the Marianas and the greater Pacific, right? So

00:14:20 Speaker_01
I want this information because I've seen a decline in the number of weavers and we just don't have these things written down, right? And so this was one method of documentation that I thought I, at the time I was just doing it.

00:14:35 Speaker_04
I know that you work with a lot of pandan and coconut leaves. Can you tell me a little bit about the materials that you use and do you ever stray from those two main plant sources?

00:14:50 Speaker_01
Yeah, so I see you've done your research and or you've you have some spies, but you're correct. It goes by many names in English, but I do use pandanus leaves. That's the main material that I love to work with.

00:15:05 Speaker_01
That's the one that I had learned just after coconut leaves and it really, you know, drew me in. I've dabbled a little bit with bamboo. We have a history of weaving bamboo in the Marianas as well.

00:15:19 Speaker_01
We have several vines that produce long aerial roots, kind of like banyan trees put down those long skinny roots. And I use those from time to time. And if I can manipulate it and I can try and make something with it, I'll try.

00:15:35 Speaker_01
But for the most part, I focus on pandanus, which we call aggek. So aggek weaving is my focus. And then whenever somebody needs a coconut leaf basket, I'll go and get coconut leaves and weave whatever they need.

00:15:52 Speaker_04
And are a lot of these plants completely native grown or do you have to cultivate them? Are they in decline?

00:16:02 Speaker_01
Hmm, I should know this because I'm a botany student, right? But even they don't know because these plants are kind of understudied on our side of the Pacific. But so amongst the thousands of species of pandanus, we have

00:16:17 Speaker_01
one particular named variety called aggek.

00:16:22 Speaker_04
So aggek, or pandanus, is a plant. It looks a little Seussian. It's got this thin, tall, brown trunk, maybe four meters high, with a sprout of spiky, reed-like leaves at the top. It's kind of like a tall Joshua tree or a spikier fern on top of a pole.

00:16:43 Speaker_01
And aggek looks just like the other pandanus trees, except the leaves have this bluish-green, I think in botany they call it glaucous coating on it, waxy coating, that makes them look like this bluish-green color.

00:17:00 Speaker_01
And because pandanus is a dioecious, or the male flowers and the female flowers are on different plants, so effectively one tree is male and the other is female.

00:17:12 Speaker_04
So plants can have flowers that have male and female parts, it can have separate flowers that are male and others that are female on the same tree, or the trees could be entirely male while another is entirely female.

00:17:25 Speaker_04
And one theory is that this strategy has evolved as a defense against insects that eat the plants, kind of keeps them guessing. And for more on why there is such a beautiful floral rainbow of sex in plants,

00:17:36 Speaker_04
you can see the study plant sex and the evolution of plant defenses against herbivores. But for more on why humans have variation in sexes and genders, you can see our great mega encore of neuroendocrinology, which we'll link in the show notes.

00:17:50 Speaker_04
But with the pandanus plant, which again looks like a mix between a palm tree and a spiky agave on a trunk.

00:17:58 Speaker_04
They've been cultivated on the islands for centuries by cutting off the plant at the crown of leaves where the trunk starts to become woody and then planting that during the rainier times.

00:18:08 Speaker_04
And while coconut trees and some other fiber plants grow in the wild, this type of pandanus is usually planted near people's homes or ranches, James tells me.

00:18:18 Speaker_01
But anyways, that's going way deep into the pandanus grove.

00:18:21 Speaker_04
Now when you go into a grocery store or literally anywhere with a basket, is your eye drawn to it and you say, that's a crappy basket or that's a machine-woven basket or That's a lazy one. What happens when you see baskets?

00:18:42 Speaker_04
Because I see it, I go, it's a basket. But you probably see things and can absolutely detect how they were made and what they were made of. What is your reaction to them?

00:18:55 Speaker_01
I don't want to come off as sounding critical or judgmental. No. You could be a snob.

00:19:01 Speaker_04
If anyone I have ever talked to in my life can be a basket snob, James, it's going to be you.

00:19:06 Speaker_01
Oh, man.

00:19:06 Speaker_04
You have free reign. Licensed to be a basket bitch right now.

00:19:11 Speaker_01
I will try not to be a basket bitch, but in all honesty, I see these baskets and I, you know, to be honest, I cringe sometimes when my friends buy these like baskets that, you know, Pier 1 has some cool stuff and like world market, you know, these furniture slash import stores, right, that are in the States.

00:19:30 Speaker_01
And so when I see them buy something and then I like, and then I go, And then sometimes they hear it, sometimes they don't, right? And it's so funny. And they go, Whoa, what? Why? I really like this one. I said, No, it's nice. You like it.

00:19:45 Speaker_01
That's all that matters. You know, $5 bottle of wine. If you like it, that's all that matters. I don't like it, but I didn't mean for you to hear that, but I don't like it. And so you asked about machine made or whatever.

00:20:00 Speaker_01
And I think what it is for me is, is that I have noticed, and people of the Marianas and the greater Micronesian region and the Polynesian region, because those are, I'm most familiar with We are guilty of this.

00:20:14 Speaker_01
You know that stamp or sticker on things from foreign countries that says export quality, right? Export quality. I will tell you this, the shit they got on their country or island is way better, to be honest.

00:20:30 Speaker_04
That's right, consumers. If you're not in the places the baskets are from, those export quality works probably suck so bad and you don't even know it. Humiliating. How bad is it?

00:20:41 Speaker_04
It's like if you're pinky out sipping from a champagne flute, but you don't even realize it's actually Colt 45.

00:20:48 Speaker_01
Like, OK, give you a good example. Philippines exports a lot of pandanus weaving, even to Oahu, Guam, Tahiti, everywhere. They have a really big industry. They export these things and the weave is like an inch, inch and a half across.

00:21:06 Speaker_01
It's like these big leaves. It probably took them like five minutes to make that biscuit. Oh, really? And they probably sold it for $0.10 American. And then America is probably charging you $40 at this boutique. Oh, my God.

00:21:23 Speaker_01
I'm not trying to put anyone out of business in the States, but that's just how economies work, right? But I see things. And some things I fall in love with, like at an Indonesian import store in the Bay Area when I used to live in Sacramento.

00:21:39 Speaker_01
Because I was in the military too, and I got stationed in various places in the States. And I went into this store, and it looked bougie and fancy. And I go, oh man, these are like tropical people. Let me go see what they got.

00:21:56 Speaker_04
So James rubbed his hands together like someone hungry for dinner after a long day.

00:22:00 Speaker_01
And then they had some really nicely made things that were from Pandanus as well. And so I may have spent more money than I should have on that basket, but it was beautiful. And it was well made. And it's just because I do it myself, right?

00:22:19 Speaker_01
And then I see their attention to detail. It really catches my eye and really pulls me in. And then, you know, when my friends buy these, like, you know, $15 baskets at the supermarket, the person who made that didn't put their heart and soul into it.

00:22:35 Speaker_01
I think that's what separates the really nice things from the, you know, the things that, well, somebody else can buy it.

00:22:44 Speaker_04
What types of things are woven from the smallest to the biggest items? I know that you've made everything from earrings to, you know, fishing baskets, but what types of things are woven?

00:22:56 Speaker_01
So we have a wide range of woven items from containers like baskets, baskets with lids, shoulder bags, and these are pandanus, right?

00:23:08 Speaker_01
We have mats, sleeping mats, then with coconut leaves they make the thatching for roofs, and then baskets and mats and wall coverings and fans and hats. The hats were a more modern introduction.

00:23:22 Speaker_01
but are Western-style hats with, like, brims and crowns, right?

00:23:27 Speaker_04
So a lot of functional things, like used to shade the sun, to keep out the rain, to hold your stuff, to curl up, to go to sleep on. And while a lot of Pacific Islander plant fiber art is utilitarian, it doesn't have to be.

00:23:39 Speaker_01
But the smallest things I've woven, which is non-standard, I guess, is like those miniature weaving that I did for an art exhibition in 2019. I had woven a bird, a grasshopper.

00:23:55 Speaker_01
Oh, and yeah, we make toys too, like little figures and stuff out of coconut leaves and pandanus. But they were all smaller than the diameter of a dime.

00:24:04 Speaker_04
Oh my god.

00:24:05 Speaker_01
It could sit on a dime. They were woven with less than one or around one millimeter strips.

00:24:12 Speaker_00
Wow.

00:24:13 Speaker_01
That I had to split the objek to and then weave them big around my

00:24:22 Speaker_01
sausage fingers and just try and keep the form correct and then use a needle or like a toothpick type picking tool to kind of like feed it through and then tug on the loose ends but without like crushing the weaving because it's so tiny and the whole exhibit it was kind of a play on words because Guam and the Marianas is in Micronesia so I called it micro weaving

00:24:53 Speaker_01
Our islands are small, but we're pretty badass. Agreed. That's the smallest I've woven.

00:25:00 Speaker_04
What is happening design-wise in your brain when you're doing that? Do you just have a kind of an idea of it, like a 3D modeling in your head, and you're just trying to manipulate into shapes?

00:25:12 Speaker_01
You know, you hit the nail on the head with that question because that's how I make new things. I look at it in my head and actually I got into a, I probably shouldn't be, I'm not going to name drop.

00:25:24 Speaker_01
I'm just going to say that somebody who I spent a considerable amount of time with and may or may not have lived together with this person would get on my case about not working.

00:25:36 Speaker_01
When I had a project to weave, I don't think they realize that when I sit there staring at the wall or with my eyes closed, it's not me wasting time. Like I am constantly weaving in my mind or like what people say, running the numbers.

00:25:56 Speaker_01
Some things need time to marinate. trying to see the most effective way without wasting material, because you have to get the material. They don't sell it at Hobby Lobby, right? We don't sell it at Michael's.

00:26:09 Speaker_01
So I have to pick the leaves and I have to clean them if they need cleaning and process them if they need processing. That is the most spiritual part, in my opinion, of weaving.

00:26:21 Speaker_01
You know, it's like you just sit there, you're in the zone, your mind clears, and you're cleaning leaves, right? You're processing materials. But it's also the part I don't really like. Because it's not the creation part.

00:26:33 Speaker_01
The creation part is what, you know... What is that phrase I learned from an old man? It tickles my fancy. It's something that really keeps me doing it. If you didn't like something, you wouldn't be doing it for 30 years unless it pays your bills.

00:26:49 Speaker_01
With that previous roommate of mine, I was like, you need to finish your project. I have to. know what I'm going to do first, you know, without wasting copious amounts of material, right?

00:27:01 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:27:01 Speaker_01
So that's what happens. I think about it, I assemble it in my head like you had described and go from there.

00:27:09 Speaker_04
And James has crafted these tiny sculptures of thin, thin strips of plant fiber, making geometric but intricate shrimp and grasshoppers and scorpions whose proportions are spot on, but they remain a little abstract in this angularity.

00:27:27 Speaker_04
And of course, the colors are fresh green, some have streaks of drying yellow, but all the plant strips look impeccable and unblemished, and that is not by chance.

00:27:38 Speaker_04
And when it comes to prepping the leaves, I know that there's probably a certain tenderness that you need and a greenness that you have to have to weave at a malleability.

00:27:50 Speaker_04
Does some of that come from soaking it in water or leaving it in the sun to wilt? Is there a really narrow time window that you can weave with?

00:28:02 Speaker_01
So it depends on the material. Coconut leaves, depending on which branch you take, because they kind of look like, you know, palm tree, right?

00:28:09 Speaker_01
And so the bottom most leaves are mostly reserved for thatching and work baskets because they're really stiff and they're hard to manipulate. They don't lend themselves over to fine weaving.

00:28:22 Speaker_01
And then the higher up leaves are more soft and supple and pliable. They're easily worked, but Again, they're not as structurally tough, right?

00:28:32 Speaker_04
So when it comes to weaving, upstairs coconut leaves or binya are softer and better for finer work. And the downstairs leaves are hardier and stiffer and better for structural functional things.

00:28:46 Speaker_04
But it also depends on how you treat them once they're harvested.

00:28:50 Speaker_01
So it just depends. Coconut leaves, if you pick the bingat, the bane of my journey's beginning, the young leaf, and you wilt that in the sun, you have maybe two days to work with it if you keep it out of the sun after initially wilting it.

00:29:09 Speaker_01
Green leaves from further down the tree last much longer up the tree, and then pandanus, which is really nice. Algarc is a very special cultivar. You pick the leaves when they die, and they've turned brown on the tree. There's a one way anyways.

00:29:25 Speaker_01
And you remove the horrendous thorns that grow on three sides of the leaves, the margins and the middle.

00:29:31 Speaker_04
These thorns are no joke, man. I look them up and they're similar to the serrated shark teeth that are on the sides of aloe plants. So first you have to contend with and remove those.

00:29:43 Speaker_01
And then you roll them up into these coils that are, you know, basically if you imagine like a belt that's rolled up onto itself, like a coil of that shape. And so these leaves,

00:29:58 Speaker_01
If you pick them at noon, when the sun is directly over you, you would think everything would be really hot and dry and brittle or crispy as we say in Chamorro English, but these leaves are still soft and supple.

00:30:11 Speaker_01
You can like crumple them up and wrap them around your hand and they don't crack. And that's why they're renowned in the greater Micronesian region and why they've exported plants to other islands. So there's no need for soaking or wetting the leaves.

00:30:29 Speaker_01
You basically just process them, store them in your house, and you have to put them in the sun every so often because it's so humid in the Marianas that if you leave the coiled leaves in your house, sometimes they get moldy, you know?

00:30:45 Speaker_01
When you store your leaves, traditionally, you're supposed to put them in the sun like once a week, if you're not using them, and then flip them over to, I think that the English word is like solar sterilized, they call it.

00:30:59 Speaker_01
That's basically what we're doing.

00:31:01 Speaker_04
You know, it's funny, my husband does that with his jujitsu things before he washes them. He takes his disgusting, sweaty jujitsu stuff, puts it on the porch and lets it dry, and then he throws it in the water.

00:31:13 Speaker_01
It makes a difference.

00:31:14 Speaker_04
This is actually more than just anecdotal. There's a paper coming out in the December issue of Infection Prevention in Practice titled, Evaluation of the Antimicrobial Effect of a Far-UV Radiation Lamp in a Real-Life Environment.

00:31:28 Speaker_04
which reminds us that UV light has been used for over a century as a germicide, and high-energy, short-wavelength UVC light in particular is good at messing with the DNA of microbes, although sunshine can itself kill nasties.

00:31:45 Speaker_04
There was a 2018 paper titled, Daylight Exposure Modulates Bacterial Communities Associated With Household Dust in the journal Microbiome, which notes that even letting more sunshine through your windows can reduce bacterial load and household dust.

00:31:59 Speaker_04
So when you're staring off into space, watching dust motes dancing in a beam of light, just know that they are in peril and you're the villain in their story. Speaking of letting your mind wander, What are you thinking about when you're weaving?

00:32:14 Speaker_04
Are you listening to music? Are you just processing thoughts? Are you listening to a book on tape?

00:32:20 Speaker_01
So basically, I'm listening to ologies with Allie Ward all day, every day. No, I'm just kidding. Sorry.

00:32:27 Speaker_04
It's fine.

00:32:29 Speaker_01
So for the most part, I have found over the many years, YouTube and Netflix and VCR tapes and DVDs are not good accompaniments for weaving. Not because I cannot weave without looking or something, but you Make mistakes when you're distracted, right?

00:32:48 Speaker_01
Things that other people wouldn't see, but another weaver of similar skill will look, give you the look, look back at your thing, and then, what's the word? Chortle. I'll be lying if I say we're not judgmental.

00:33:08 Speaker_04
You will be chortled upon by your weaving peers if you're sloppy. So do you just kind of let your brain sit in silence and your thoughts wander?

00:33:17 Speaker_01
Yeah, sometimes I try to listen to music, but then I get like hung up on the meaning or the emotion or the mood of the music. Even with classical music, too.

00:33:31 Speaker_01
So a lot of times when I'm weaving, I'm just sitting here, just weaving, and then take a break. I don't think I'll ever get burned out of weaving, but my body will disagree with me.

00:33:41 Speaker_01
Mentally, I'm like, I can go for 24, 36 hours, but my arms and fingers are like, slow down, bro.

00:33:48 Speaker_04
Last week's episode was about exactly this. It was about burnout. And James is doing just what expert Dr. Candy Weens recommends. He's taking breaks, he's getting a coffee or a snack when he needs to, and he's listening to his body as he works.

00:34:03 Speaker_04
Way to go. Doing it right. Well, we had a question about that from listeners. Can I ask you some listener questions? We'll do kind of a lightning round. Amazing.

00:34:11 Speaker_00
Sure.

00:34:11 Speaker_04
First, we'll donate to a cause of his choosing, and this week it's going to Sagan Kodaran Chamorro, the Chamorro Cultural Center, which hosts Chamorro artisans and cultural practitioners who wish to develop and exhibit their art form.

00:34:25 Speaker_04
and those who wish to share and sharpen their skills in traditional methods of farming, cooking, and healing. And we'll link the Chamorro Cultural Center in the show notes.

00:34:34 Speaker_04
So thanks for the heads up on their great work, James, and thanks to sponsors who make that donation possible. Okay, let's get into the weeds with your questions. I thought this was a great question.

00:34:46 Speaker_04
Addie Capello, Brianna Chatterton, Earl of Graymilken, and eating dog hair for a living. In eating dog hair's words, asked, how many cuts on your fingers do you estimate you've had? And Addie Capello asked, do your fingers get sliced up a bunch?

00:35:02 Speaker_01
So that generally only occurs during the pandanus leaf processing stage, which after almost 30 years of experience, I've minimized it to maybe five to 10 pricks of those giant thorns on the edges, but oh my God, in the beginning.

00:35:19 Speaker_01
And my students, it's so fun because I have such a good, I have a really good photographer. So I have approximately seven apprentices on other islands and one on Oahu.

00:35:31 Speaker_04
seven apprentices.

00:35:33 Speaker_01
And when we clean leaves together, it's always fun to hear that. And then I had a stupid leaf. You know, they get upset at the leaf. And I said, OK, you know what the elders say? if the aggek kisses you, it's a good leaf.

00:35:54 Speaker_01
And they go, I don't like these kind of kisses.

00:35:57 Speaker_01
I go, well, you know, it's just a nice way of saying if you get poked by the aggek, it's a good leaf, which I think they just say that because you're undoubtedly going to get poked by the thorns, you know.

00:36:07 Speaker_04
I feel like every kid has heard their mom or dad in the garage building something with the exact same kind of words. We've all heard it from somewhere. It just means you're making progress. A lot of people had questions about patterns.

00:36:30 Speaker_04
Allie B, Dave Brewer, Deanna, Mouse Paxton, Anthony Richards, Jacob Shepard, Laleigh Broughton, and Cooper Michael asked, do the patterns tell stories in any way?

00:36:39 Speaker_04
And Allie B wanted to know, are baskets and other items made by a pattern like knitting or crochet?

00:36:46 Speaker_01
So kind of, sort of, let's move to first the patterns with meaning. So unfortunately the Marianas has a very storied history with outside intervention and influence over the years and suppression of knowledge.

00:37:04 Speaker_01
So although we still knew how to do these patterns and still know how to weave and do certain indigenous technologies that benefited the colonizers, like weaving and building, and shipbuilding was ceased, so inter-islands

00:37:22 Speaker_01
navigation was stamped out early on. But hut building, they really liked. And basket weaving, they really liked. Farming, our farming, they really liked. So they allowed us to farm. And really good fishermen, right? But the patterns that we weave

00:37:39 Speaker_01
don't have deep, significant meaning anymore. But this traditionally tied millennium old meaning is gone, unfortunately. And then the other question was regarding forms or patterns and weaving, like knitting, right? Yes and no.

00:38:00 Speaker_01
So we use these wooden blocks that we've been making for thousands of years from local woods, like we, you know, take a log and shape it into a cylinder or a box, and we would weave around that. And that's to reproduce the same thing.

00:38:16 Speaker_01
And on that wooden block or in the weaver's head, because we were mostly a rote memorization culture, you know, there was no writing back in the day, really, they would memorize how many strips it would take to weave that certain basket.

00:38:33 Speaker_01
And then later on, like, even I do it now where I will write, I call them my recipes. Other people say it sounds better of formula. And I go, I don't care.

00:38:43 Speaker_01
It's just some numbers and measurements of what I need to make this purse that people really like.

00:38:49 Speaker_04
Okay, so how does he do it? Let's get to some behind the scenes fundamentals here.

00:38:54 Speaker_01
So when I come up with a new item that has a particular way of making it, I will usually make the strips as long as I possibly can, right? So there'll be long enough for the project, right? And then once I get all those information down in my head,

00:39:10 Speaker_01
And when I start to do the final trimming or tucking, and then I measure the leaves one last time and I write it down, right? I think we use the word interchangeably, design and pattern, right?

00:39:20 Speaker_01
So these like patterns on the actual weaving itself, they're very geometric and very mathematical. Something special studies course that I used to teach at the University of Guam. And so I would tell them that, welcome to this What do they call it now?

00:39:38 Speaker_01
They call it something fancy in academia, but I always tell them weaving is a holistic approach to being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, because you got to know math, you got to know meteorology for planting the plants, right?

00:39:50 Speaker_01
You got to know a little bit about weather, and then you got to know about humidity and the manipulation of the material, and then you got to know agriculture so you can plant the plants, right?

00:40:02 Speaker_04
So like interdisciplinary studies?

00:40:05 Speaker_01
Oh yes, there's the word that they are saying. Do you thought this was going to be an easy peasy weaving class, easy A, but this is an interdisciplinary class that only one professor is teaching. It's me. Welcome to weaving 101.

00:40:23 Speaker_01
It's a 300 level course. So going back to the pedagogy part or the teaching methodology, all of this was being done, you know, by my elders. It's just they didn't like, you know, make my feelings feel good and hold my hand and tell me, James,

00:40:42 Speaker_01
This is a 45 degree angle. Your basket looks like shit because it's at a 80 degree angle and there's holes in it because you didn't measure your strips properly. So that's how I bridge the gap. I try to tell them that

00:40:59 Speaker_01
This weaving is supposed to be at a 45 degree angle. If you're, you know, too much or too little of an angle, you're going to have gaps and it won't hold the materials you want or water's going to seep out or whatever. And all these crazy things.

00:41:13 Speaker_04
So James teaches a little differently than he learned, which is to say that he explains things because he wants this art and tradition to continue. But it's not easy to wrap your head around first.

00:41:24 Speaker_01
It's a whole lot to think about.

00:41:26 Speaker_04
Well, you mentioned something about having gaps and a lot of people, basic question, but Will Clark, Rachel Guthrie, Ariel Bell, Kelly Shaver, Isa Brillard, and Adam Foote all wanted to know, how do you make them watertight? How does that work?

00:41:44 Speaker_01
So for coconut leaf weaving, you need to size your leaves. If you ever go to the tropics where they have coconut leaves, doesn't matter, Caribbean, Pacific, right? Doesn't matter.

00:41:55 Speaker_01
and you see a coconut leaf weaver, nine times out of 10, he's doing it because you're there, right? He's not doing it for himself, right? He's doing a demonstration. He's probably trying to sell you a coconut leaf hat, more power to him.

00:42:08 Speaker_01
He's going to weave that hat as fast as possible, right? To make money, right? Or to demonstrate because he's getting paid to do it by the hotel, right?

00:42:17 Speaker_04
But the functional and good stuff requires more precision.

00:42:21 Speaker_01
But the more advanced weaving is like for coconut leaves that you make them all the same width. So natural materials are just that they grow as they grow and there's variation, right? So you've got to get them as close as possible to each other.

00:42:36 Speaker_01
Then when you weave it, they're at a pretty close 45 degree angle and you have to weave it tight. And so while you're weaving it, you only weave a few inches at a time, let it wilt and dry out because it has moisture, right?

00:42:49 Speaker_01
And then the leaves shrink a little, then you retighten it, then you weave up further.

00:42:53 Speaker_01
And then at the end, you moisten the leaves just enough, because they're already dried, to make them pliable again, but not so moist that they expand from absorbing on water. And you close the basket as tightly as possible without breaking the leaves.

00:43:09 Speaker_01
And then once the basket dries, you shouldn't see but just pinpricks of light through the basket. Coconut leaves, right? And most people don't think of coconut leaf baskets as being able to hold water. And then when the basket gets wet,

00:43:25 Speaker_01
and it soaks up all the leaves, the leaves expand and close up those tiny gaps that are, you know, impossible to close up. It's just part of nature. The basket swells up and I'm not saying it's like having a plastic bag, okay?

00:43:41 Speaker_01
But it can hold water for quite a long time. It's not like having a hydro flask or, you know, like a canteen, right? It's like it can hold water.

00:43:51 Speaker_04
James says it's not just the coconut leaves that can hold water. The pandanus leaves can as well, with a slightly different technique.

00:43:58 Speaker_01
If you weave exceptionally well and exceptionally tightly, when the basket expands, the leaves, the actual leaves, the material expands with the absorption of water. It swells up and tightens the weave even more. And so through this, I would call it,

00:44:20 Speaker_01
basically through the ancient Chamorro people's observations. I don't think they had a physics book and knew about capillary actions of leaves, but they knew that if they did it this way, it would hold water.

00:44:32 Speaker_01
And so some people, what they do is they double up the baskets so that it has a longer time to hold water.

00:44:38 Speaker_04
Capillary action, side note, is how plants draw water up from their roots, kind of like pulling a chain of water molecules up from the bottom of the plant through the leaves. They're like, come on, we're going this way, we're thirsty.

00:44:53 Speaker_04
Does it shrink back? Is it reusable or is it a one-time only deal?

00:44:57 Speaker_01
Yes, it looks ugly as hell, you know, because it gets wrinkled, you know, the leaves expanded and then contracted, but it works many, many times.

00:45:06 Speaker_04
Well, we had some people that asked about materials, and Emily Krieger says, stop it. I'm making dogbane cord right now, as I saw this post. I would love to hear more about best forged materials.

00:45:18 Speaker_04
Robbie Robbins said that they've been learning to weave with invasive species. Oliver Callis asked if invasive species or vines such as kudzu could be used for basket weaving.

00:45:28 Speaker_04
Annika Mandalore, first-time question asker, says, for those of us without any easy access to fresh pandan leaves, and says, hafa adai from Seattle, but still want to learn this style of weaving, what other materials would you recommend using if you don't have access to fresh pandan or coconut?

00:45:47 Speaker_01
Okay, so foraging, invasive kudzu, and other materials that can be used, right? This can tie in a little bit to the invasive species. Like, let's say I have this thing, plant, or tree, or bush, or shrub in my yard, and I'm trying to kill it, right?

00:46:03 Speaker_01
Because I don't want it there.

00:46:04 Speaker_04
But he says he could make something fun with prolifically growing vines, like the Japanese and Chinese native kudzu that was introduced to the US 150 years ago as an ornamental and a potential snacky for livestock.

00:46:18 Speaker_04
But it has since blanketed the eastern US. It's kudzu's world. We're just living in it.

00:46:23 Speaker_01
I have seen kudzu from a distance when I was down in the panhandle of Florida and it looks like kudzu produces very long vines.

00:46:33 Speaker_01
I think the reason for bringing it in was cattle fodder, but it didn't work because American cows don't like kudzu apparently or something. And then it became invasive. I bet it could be used because it produces very long materials.

00:46:48 Speaker_01
And so I guess transitioning into the question, apparently from one of my people, from Oahu to Washington.

00:46:58 Speaker_04
Half a day means hi or hello or hey in the Chamorro language. So half a day, Anika.

00:47:04 Speaker_01
The alternative materials that you could use is like those packing straps from like boxes, those plastic ones that are like half an inch, quarter inch in width.

00:47:15 Speaker_01
You know, if you can collect a bunch of those and try them out, they're really stiff though.

00:47:19 Speaker_04
So these are called strapping bands or five millimeter PP polypropylene plastic packing strips if you are nasty.

00:47:26 Speaker_04
And our editor Mercedes told me that she used to work a postal job and she took a little ball in this home once and says years later her cat still loves to play with it. And yes, I did find many a YouTube video with great beginner instructions.

00:47:41 Speaker_04
So you can check out the link on our website or just search for things like strapping weaving or packing strip weaving. But if you feel like your hands are too delicate to fumble with a stiff plastic, however.

00:47:54 Speaker_01
And then I know that some people practice with ribbon. They'll go get like half inch wide nylon ribbon, the little bit stiffer stuff, and then like cut them to length and then lay them out and weave baskets.

00:48:07 Speaker_01
I have an apprentice that went to school in the States and he was my student for like three or four years and he loves weaving. He would go to his professor's office and then take all the paper from the shredder.

00:48:24 Speaker_01
And it would shred it in quarter inch strips. It wasn't like top secret material that was pulverized. It was just like long strips of paper. And he wove me a basket. I still have it. I still have it. Leonardo Orsini. He wove me this white paper basket.

00:48:40 Speaker_01
I think he was a little bit like a mamalo, like ashamed or, you know, worried that I wouldn't like it. And I still have it. It went with me from Guam to Luta. And then I brought it back from Luta to Guam.

00:48:51 Speaker_01
You know, some people see that and go, oh, where'd you get that? The store? And I go, no, don't touch that. That's precious. Yeah.

00:49:00 Speaker_04
I hope he hears this. Two more questions. Robbie Robbins wants to know, how do you feel about non-Indigenous people learning traditional weaving techniques?

00:49:08 Speaker_04
And says, I'm sure it's different for different cultures, but I hate the idea of losing this knowledge to time.

00:49:13 Speaker_04
This was also on the minds of Eli the Fish Guy Moe, Dave Langlanais, Brenna Prixley, Rachel Gardner, and Maya, who, as a white lady, asked, yes, my ancestors undoubtedly wove baskets, but not these baskets.

00:49:25 Speaker_04
These are not my baskets, but can I know these baskets? And Rachel Prostako wanted to know, yeah, how do you feel about non-Indigenous people learning the skill of basket weaving?

00:49:34 Speaker_04
Is it cultural appropriation or is there a way to learn respectively if this is not part of your culture?

00:49:39 Speaker_02
Oh, that's the million dollar question. Right. Yeah.

00:49:45 Speaker_01
I get that question. I get that question asked me a lot here. Yeah. And then they wait for my validation.

00:49:51 Speaker_04
James is really respected among his peers and among really good weavers and the greater indigenous arts and traditions community. So he's a good person to ask.

00:50:01 Speaker_01
Okay, I'm going to tell you my opinion. I don't normally preface something with saying this is my official stance on something, but this is my official stance on something. If the practitioner accepts you as their student, I don't care where,

00:50:19 Speaker_01
or what place, right? Let's say one of your viewers learns weaving from the small island of XYZ and the teacher taught your listener X, Y, Z weaving, right? You know, all things considered, I would respect that.

00:50:38 Speaker_01
Because even if you were white, black, Chamorro, right, because we're not from X, Y, Z island, and the person learned and was taught by a person of that culture and was gifted that knowledge.

00:50:49 Speaker_01
Who am I to challenge that practitioner who thought that person worthy of their knowledge? It wouldn't be intergenerational transmission, but that knowledge that was transmitted to that person, right? Like I have no place to say that's wrong, right?

00:51:05 Speaker_01
So if a Hawaiian or Chamorro teaches an outsider, that's, you know, their prerogative, right? The community might say something different. They might say, why are you teaching the foreign colonizers our stuff?

00:51:19 Speaker_01
And then I go, well, I'm not the one teaching them your stuff. I'm teaching them my stuff. Step back, please. You know, like I've had to tell some.

00:51:27 Speaker_01
practitioners in other places, I won't name specific islands or states, say, why are you teaching these people? And I go, it's none of your business why I'm teaching them. Stay in your lane. You know, you're not my teacher.

00:51:40 Speaker_01
You're not the minister of Chamorro basket weaving. So it's no such thing anyways. But, you know, I have to remind some people, especially other Chamorros, right? Like Imanoto Guam or Imanoto Marianas, right? Marianas people.

00:51:54 Speaker_01
hey, this is not yours to control.

00:51:56 Speaker_01
So if you were so concerned about it, you would have learned it too, so that I wouldn't have to rely on outsiders who are interested because apparently our people are not as interested in it as I think they should be, right?

00:52:08 Speaker_01
And so focusing back in on myself, this knowledge that I share, especially on Instagram. So some people say, oh God, I can't believe you put it on Instagram. Actually,

00:52:21 Speaker_01
99.99% of the feedback I've gotten about my Instagram posts from Chamorros and non-Chamorros are like, everybody's so appreciative. I've actually had people from Hawaii, right?

00:52:30 Speaker_01
This is just between you, me, and the million people that listen to your radio show. Hawaiian people are very proud. They're very proud of their culture, which is great.

00:52:42 Speaker_01
But I've actually had Hawaiians reach out to me because they found somehow my videos on Instagram, and they were able to reintroduce weaving into their families. Because for some reason, in the 60s and 70s, nobody was interested in learning.

00:53:04 Speaker_01
They would tell me these really heartwarming stories where they have learned from me and they didn't want to tell me that they were learning from me yet until they got better because they didn't want to disappoint me.

00:53:16 Speaker_01
I was like, don't worry, I have seven of my own disappointments. I have apprentices, don't worry. For me personally, if I am approached by, I don't care if you're white, black, brown, purple, green. It doesn't matter, I suppose.

00:53:33 Speaker_01
I think it's your intentions. What are your intentions? I'm not saying don't sell weaving, right? Or whatever.

00:53:39 Speaker_01
I mean, like, are you coming to learn because you want to learn or are you just coming because it's trendy and you're not really going to focus and you're going to waste my time? Like I've had students from the Marianas who tell me they want to learn.

00:53:54 Speaker_01
And it's just because right now cultural renaissance is happening and everyone's, it's trendy to be Chamorro. And I want to learn the language, but I'm not going to do it well.

00:54:03 Speaker_01
And I want to learn weaving, but my weaving is going to look like something Senyo Bamba will vomit in their mouth a little later on.

00:54:12 Speaker_01
But to answer those questions about cultural appropriation and whatnot, in my opinion, in my stance, if you were to learn weaving or whatever cultural practice that is allowable to be taught, like there are some things that Chamorros will not teach outsiders.

00:54:30 Speaker_01
They will not teach. Even if you ask, let's say some of these spiritual healers, right? Some do herbal medicine, some do massage, some do spiritual intervention, I guess is what you can call it, for the ancestral spirits.

00:54:44 Speaker_01
The people that do the ancestral spirit work, or intervention, or I like to call it also arbitration. outsiders. I'm pretty sure they won't because that is something that's only passed down. Maybe times are changing, you know, just like weaving.

00:55:00 Speaker_01
Weaving was reserved for family, you know, intergenerational transmission between grandparents and parents and then children and then grandchildren like that. But Times change.

00:55:10 Speaker_01
Maybe in 10, 15 years, some person that's not Chamorro is going to go to a Chamorro practitioner and be like, teach me your spiritual intervention training. And then they'll be like, uh, sure. You're the first person that's interested in like 10 years.

00:55:24 Speaker_01
Yeah, sure. Come on in.

00:55:26 Speaker_04
And this next one about tomorrow's baskets was asked by Robin Stumbo, anthro curator, Kelly Shaver, and... Well, looking into the future, Susan Gare says, thank you for this topic.

00:55:37 Speaker_04
I come from a tribe known for our basket making, and I would like to hear about plant stewardship and climate change. Are impacts from changing climate affecting weaving in your region? Is anything being done to mitigate it?

00:55:48 Speaker_04
And I know that you're a botany student now. Last listener question, maybe a little bit of a bummer, but climate change, how is it affecting that?

00:55:57 Speaker_01
Oh, this is actually a hot topic right now. So climate change and how it affects cultural practices across the wide gamut of disciplines, right? It's not, you know, just weaving or herbal medicine, but it's also fisheries, traditional fisheries, right?

00:56:13 Speaker_01
And everything. So traditionally, aggek and coconut leaves that are used for weaving come from the coastline, just because of airflow and sunlight. And both plants can tolerate brackish water, salty water, like mixture of salt and fresh water, right?

00:56:29 Speaker_01
They have been grown there because of the access to full sun, because if you plant them in the jungle, they don't get the barrage of solar rays that make the leaves stronger and more durable. But

00:56:39 Speaker_01
Anyways, the rising tides are shrinking some coastlines or enveloping some islands at that, right? And so it's definitely of great concern. The last part of the question, you know, what are we doing? Well,

00:56:56 Speaker_01
To be honest, I'm not doing that much myself other than telling people my observations from my conservation work in the jungle in the Marianas.

00:57:05 Speaker_01
And hopefully me, like, tapping the shoulders of my ecology friends and biology friends who are in those circles, keep telling them what I'm seeing and what is being affected and what trends are being noticed with certain plants.

00:57:23 Speaker_01
new observations of insects moving into areas that they're not in normally. You know, invasive species that are encroaching into native forests because of these changes in the shift of the rainy season, the monsoon season and everything.

00:57:36 Speaker_01
Definitely, I am alerting people to that. And I think it's a major concern for practitioners who utilize these wild, non-timber forest products to make their creations and

00:57:49 Speaker_01
Maybe soon we'll be able to design some studies and figure out why they're declining, but until then, we're noticing that they're declining.

00:57:56 Speaker_04
I imagine that's got to be one difficult thing about what you do. Listen, a mission of ours is to debunk flim flam and clear up matters of ignorance.

00:58:05 Speaker_04
So I'm asking this next one for myself and for listeners Josh Fry, RJ Deutch, Annette for Wine, Ted Hamilton, Melanie Yakimovic, Erin Everton, Lena Carpenter, Baz Pugmire, Mark Rubin, Sugarpuff Daddykins, Curtis Takahashi, and Kelly Shaver, and they all asked a mix of questions about the same topic.

00:58:21 Speaker_04
So I'm wondering if it was a real thing and others wondering how James handles questions about it.

00:58:26 Speaker_04
So in first-time question asker Kelly McConnell's words, I went to you Miami, go Canes, I had to look it up, that's the Hurricanes, where we are said to major in underwater basket weaving. It seems insulting to actual basket weavers, right?

00:58:40 Speaker_04
Does the underwater add anything there? Where did that come from? So let's ask a smart person a not smart question to clear this up once and for all.

00:58:49 Speaker_04
And I always ask the hardest part about what you do and the best, but the hardest part, I feel like one thing must just be all the people who ask about underwater basket weaving. Yeah.

00:59:01 Speaker_03
Okay.

00:59:06 Speaker_04
Is that the final question? I mean, is it the full question? No, I'm wondering if that's the worst part about what you do or if there's something else.

00:59:15 Speaker_01
Okay, I thought you were asking and I was like, oh, I thought this was a world renowned podcast. No, exactly.

00:59:20 Speaker_04
There are people who I'm sure that gets brought up all the time. And don't worry, we will not ask whether or not that is something that you do. I was thinking that's got to be the hardest thing about what you do.

00:59:34 Speaker_01
So, yeah, yeah, it is. They say, oh, did you learn that in underwater basket weaving at college? You know, stuff like that. Yeah, it is definitely, you know, to piggyback on this as it is, it's the worst.

00:59:48 Speaker_01
Before I left Rota, I was going to go on one last dive with the dive master because she's my neighbor. But I wanted to bring coconut leaves under. with me. I wish I would have done it, but I ran out of time. And she was for it.

01:00:04 Speaker_01
She was like, I heard that that's famous in America. I was like, no, it's not a thing.

01:00:09 Speaker_04
No, it's not a thing.

01:00:10 Speaker_01
Like underwater basket weaving is not a thing.

01:00:12 Speaker_04
Yes.

01:00:13 Speaker_01
It's not a thing. Well, it's crazy. I heard that there is a college that does it now. They wear scuba gear and they go in a pool and they weave baskets.

01:00:21 Speaker_04
Underwater basket weaving courses in college made the rounds in comedy acts in the 1960s as something that would be an easy A. Not only does it not exist, but honestly, it takes years to perfect techniques of indigenous craft.

01:00:37 Speaker_04
It is not a college major, nor is it a part of James's life.

01:00:41 Speaker_01
That's not what I do.

01:00:44 Speaker_04
But yeah, anything else, any other flim flam you'd want to bust or anything else that's really difficult about what you do?

01:00:51 Speaker_01
A lot of these questions that have been asked by your listening audience were really good.

01:00:57 Speaker_01
I think the hardest one is when people have an outside-in knowledge of this craft or skill and they truly don't know, they will tell me that I'm doing it wrong.

01:01:13 Speaker_01
And I have to remind them that this is what my family taught me and this is what friends of my family taught me.

01:01:22 Speaker_01
And then whenever I get these people, whether or not they're Chamorro, Filipino, or even some people from other islands, I have a couple of white people do it too. They'll say, ah, I can do that. Why is that basket $30? The leaves are free.

01:01:40 Speaker_01
And then I go, oh, another person. Well, here, here's a branch of coconut leaves. Weave one, and I'll pay you $30 to take it home. And then they look at me, and because I know, the person that says that, they're just trying to get a discount.

01:01:57 Speaker_01
Like, don't barrage me with the reasons why my basket shouldn't cost $20 or $500. Don't tell me it's easy or your grandma used to do it. Well, more power to your grandma if she still does it.

01:02:09 Speaker_04
Oh, that makes me so mad for you.

01:02:12 Speaker_01
I will say with a clear conscience, this is something I hate. I usually say it's a pet peeve or I dislike it, but this is that I hate.

01:02:19 Speaker_04
What about your favorite thing about weaving?

01:02:21 Speaker_01
So I guess it's a two-part thing.

01:02:24 Speaker_01
I love creating new things, but I think for me, one of the best parts is when I'm sitting there with a student or a workshop attendee or an apprentice of mine, and when they learn something and excel at it, and then take that knowledge and manipulate it,

01:02:45 Speaker_01
in their way because I don't, I don't teach it. Allie, if you were one of my students, I wouldn't say, okay, today we're going to make a purse or today we're going to make a pocket protector.

01:02:56 Speaker_01
It's when my students have that click and they too see the trees from the forest, so to speak, or the individual strips from the final product and how those things are interacting with each other to form that

01:03:12 Speaker_01
thing, that woven item, it really makes me feel accomplished because I'm this stoic, angry Chamorro teacher. I don't let them know my emotions. No, that's not true. I really want them to know that that is like my proudest moment is when I see them.

01:03:30 Speaker_01
doing things that, for lack of a better word, endangered now, you know, the lack of people doing it. That's like my proudest, like happiest, the thing I love the most is seeing others succeed in this thing that I love so much. Yeah.

01:03:47 Speaker_04
I love that you're sharing it and that it's available for people to marvel at and to learn and just to appreciate from however afar they might be. I mean, keep on doing what you're doing.

01:03:59 Speaker_01
Yeah, thank you. I am grateful that, you know, we talk.

01:04:03 Speaker_04
So ask talented people tons of questions about what they love, because that's how you learn things. James, thank you for asking your aunt and your Uncle Pedro about baskets and sharing what you know with us.

01:04:15 Speaker_04
And please enjoy more of James's work and his teachings on his Instagram, Kenyan Guahan, which we'll link in the show notes, as well as a link to our website for more studies and resources about this ology.

01:04:27 Speaker_04
Now, we may not have covered your local materials or customs in weaving, but let this episode just inspire you to seek out basket making or plant weaving or whatever put a little lightning of excitement in your belly about this. Do it for James.

01:04:43 Speaker_04
Now, thank you, Dr. Kayleigh Swift of the Corvid Fanatology episode about crow funerals, who introduced us. We'll link her episode in the show notes as well. And we're at ologies on Instagram and now Blue Sky, so find us there. I'm at AliWord on both.

01:04:56 Speaker_04
We also have smologies episodes that are kids safe and classroom friendly, and we have peeled them off into their own feed. It's linked in the show notes, or you can just search smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S.

01:05:08 Speaker_04
Wherever you get podcasts, you can subscribe there. We have Ologies merch at ologiesmerch.com. You can join Patreon and ask questions before we record at patreon.com slash ologies.

01:05:18 Speaker_04
Thank you, patrons, for making this show happen since day one, seven years ago. Erin Talbert, I've known since we were four, and happy birthday to her Lily Vanilli today. Erin Admansiology's podcast Facebook group.

01:05:28 Speaker_04
Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Ardoir does the website. Our scheduling producer is Noelle Dilworth. Susan Hale is managing director and keeps things watertight. Editor Jake Chafee processes out all our thorns.

01:05:40 Speaker_04
And lead editor, weaving all the snippets together, is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn made the theme music. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, I tell you a secret.

01:05:50 Speaker_04
And this week, it's that I write the things I have to do, or sometimes the asides that I have to research and write up.

01:05:56 Speaker_04
I number them, and I put them on little slips, and then I put them in a cup, and I draw them out, and I have to do whatever is on the slip of paper. I cannot procrastinate or put that one off. If it's on the slip of paper, that's what I have to do.

01:06:09 Speaker_04
But remember, take breaks, maybe go pick something invasive, make a fruit bowl. You deserve it. I think you can do it. Okay, bye-bye.

01:06:17 Speaker_03
Hackadermatology. Homeology. Cryptozoology. Litology. I went to Barbados with my husband. We wove hats out of palm fronds. I've never been happier.