(gentle music) - I pray when I'm cutting.

I pray when I'm sewing.

I pray when I'm just tacking down the ribbon.

(sewing machine rumbling) (gentle music) - I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit.

And, meeting Lisa, she was the same way.

(gentle music) - That is our goal, is to reduce the lake trout so that we can increase habitat for... An area for our bull trout and westslope cutthroat.

- [Valeria] The number of baskets in my lifetime, I'm gonna say hundreds.

I mean, my baskets have gone all over the US.

(gentle music) - [Mario] I just liked to show the community that style of cooking.

There's nowhere else in town that I know of that does that style of cooking.

(gentle upbeat music) - [Narrator] This University of Montana School of Journalism production was made possible with production support from, the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends and values of importance to Montanans.

And by the University of Montana.

(gentle music) (water sloshing) - I love being outside.

I mean, that's where all my inspiration comes from.

I love listening to the water and listening to the trees and the birds.

And oh, no, I love it.

I love it.

I like the process of being outdoors and cutting that willow.

That fresh willow because I can bundle it and then bring it home and store it.

And I use it.

I mean, I don't waste it.

My name is Valeria Veis.

I've been weaving baskets for approximately 30 years.

My story of how I first started weaving for the first time begins with wanting to take a class.

So I put myself in the car and drove to Great Falls and began a six-week basket weaving class and I just fell in love with it.

(gentle music) The process of beginning a basket for me would...

The first thing is to determine, do I want an antler basket?

Do I want to put a birch bark handle on it?

Do I wanna incorporate some of that willow that I've cut?

So, if anything, it has to have a solid foundation.

(gentle music) Protection.

I guess, for lack of a better word.

(Valeria sighs) (gentle music) (tape measure rattling) So then I cut off reed and I work with the rattan plant.

The first thing is to make the base.

So I have to have a strong base.

And then I put in the side spokes and the number of side spokes will determine the design I wanna put on my basket.

They range anywhere from probably... From start to finish product, anywhere from three to 15-20 hours.

It just depends on the size of the basket.

Those bigger baskets are harder because of the reed is thicker.

So, there's a lot of pulling and tugging.

So it's just repetitive, over two under one over two.

I started going to craft shows and people found interest in my baskets.

I needed a name, right?

And I wanted to not just have Valeria Veis, I mean, I'm from Montana and I make baskets.

So that's how Montana Baskets was born.

(water sloshing) I grew up in a generation where parents didn't talk about anything.

I mean, you just left the past in the past.

My brother was in a horrible accident.

Brad and I and my new baby ended up down in a Billings Hospital.

And I walked into a room and saw a man that I knew was my father with two Native ladies and I had no idea who they were.

And from that began my research.

(gentle music) Here, lo and behold, you know, some months later this paper came back that said, yes, you're eligible for enrollment in the Little Shell Tribe of Montana and that, I think, happened in '91 or '92.

- I know that it was deeply meaningful for her to find that piece of her missing heritage.

It was challenging at times.

There were times when you found out things that you say, "Why didn't anybody tell me about that?"

- Finding out about my Native heritage really answered a lot of questions for me.

Why I was attracted to like certain sounds, music, art, 'cause there was all this Native art that I was attracted to.

And then from that I learned the baskets that (indistinct) Little Shell people, they were basket weavers.

(gentle music) Part of the Native American Program through the Made in Montana Program is...

It's tremendous opportunity because people see my name on their website.

My daughter, Natalie is a bead artist.

A tremendous bead artist.

She and I do shows together.

She sets up her bead work and will work there, do beading during the show.

I mean, we love talking about our art and them sharing their experiences, us sharing our experiences.

So I'm looking very forward to the show in March.

I did not grow up in a Native culture.

Everything I've learned has been through speaking to elders within the Little Shell Tribe, within the community itself.

So it was really, really important for me, for my kids and my grandchildren to know their Celtic identity, their Norwegian identity, their German identity and their Native identity through art.

(gentle music) I think I will continue weaving and painting the rest of my life.

My art experience for me is therapy.

It is.

It just calms my soul.

It's just in my soul.

It's who I am.

(gentle music) (keys clacking) - I wanna be the restaurant where kids say, "Hey dad, that's where I wanna go for my birthday."

Or, "That's where I wanna go for my anniversary."

(gentle music) My name is Mario McCullough.

The name of this restaurant is Big Chief Chinese LLC.

When I get here, I usually get here around nine o'clock in the morning, A lot of times I don't get out of here until 09:30 at night.

So when I do work, it is 12 and a half-hour straight.

Barely take a break to use the bathroom.

I do everything fresh every day.

I do all my sauces from scratch and do all my batters from scratch and cut down my own chickens and beef.

And it's just, fabricate the food from scratch.

A lot of people just don't do that anymore.

They order it in prefabricated and then just warm it up to serve it.

It's a real high-intensive labor position.

But I've been working long hours my whole life.

I originally came to Browning because I was an enrolled member.

MY grandmother's full blooded Blackfeet.

And when I came up to visit, that's when I had met my wife.

So we would come up and visit for the holidays and I kinda got a feel for the community.

I was just getting sick of cooking for other businesses and I just wanted to have my own place so I could get full credit for my accomplishments in my food.

(car engine roaring) I was looking for a commercial location up here and the lady said that she would sell me the business.

She gave me about 30 days to come up with the money.

I sold my boat.

I sold my four-wheeler.

I sold my food truck.

I sold anything I could to come up with the money.

I talked to a bank and I got a loan for $50,000 to remodel the property.

I got a Native American grant.

They bought my $7,000 wok.

They bought a $5,000 freezer and a $1,200 fryer for me.

I think God definitely had my back on this deal.

(gentle music) I did Chinese food 'cause that's what this town wanted.

And when I purchased the building, I was like, "Well, I need to get some Chinese background."

And then I kept looking and looking and I found PF Chang's, Downtown Spokane.

So I applied there and they gave me a shot for a cook.

So that's when I cooked on the wok for six months and learned how the wok was ran.

And got a good feeling for how to make the sauces and the soups and everything.

But I've got a lot of education and experience behind me in a bigger food setting.

So if you go to another restaurant and see 'em as busy as I am, there's nine cooks back there cooking.

And I usually do it by myself with my son's help.

(gentle music) - [Mario's Son] I do prep work.

So that's just like...

I just get all the vegetables and stuff prepped up and I make sure everything's good to go before we open.

And then, I'm also a sous chef as well.

So I know how to cook everything that's on our menu.

I think it's just a good sit-down place to come eat or whatever or if you want like, just take out or you just grab it and then go back to whatever you're doing.

I think it's just...

It's a good environment.

Just good food.

Good everyday.

(gentle music) - Yeah, moving forward, I'd like to keep this restaurant.

This restaurant really is successful.

It really generates a lot of money.

It's good for the community.

Personally, I kinda get burnout just cooking one type of food.

It's almost like that movie "Groundhog's Day".

I come in, I make the same sauces, the same soups and the same order every day.

Well, what I wanna do is Italian food.

Italian food, it's in my blood.

I was raised on that food and I've cooked a lot of Italian food professionally.

So, I want to be able to offer the community a taste of my Italian food because if they really like my Chinese food then they're gonna really drop over dead when they eat this Italian food that I cook.

(gentle music) (boat engine roaring) - What we're doing is what's important for the tribe in trying to help sustain a bull trout population and a westslope cutthroat popula The name of the business is Native Fish Keepers.

I started the program in '98 and basically I've been here since then.

The main fish that we are trying to suppress in Flathead Lake is the lake trout.

When we started our suppression program, we wanted to use the resource but not waste the resource.

And so we came up with the plan to do the processing and put our fish on the market.

NFKI is a nonprofit.

Most of the money we make from our fish sales helps with our operating costs and creates jobs for people to come out and work in the fish industry.

The crew was small in the beginning and now our crew is up to eight people at certain times.

We have a large boat that we take out just about every day and we set suppression nets.

Our nets, sometimes we set a half a mile a net.

Sometimes you set two miles a net.

And the next day we go out and we pull our nets and we pick our fish on the boat, out of the net and put 'em in totes.

We have another boat comes out and they'll pick up what fish have been picked the first couple hours of the morning and bring them back to the Blue Bay, the processing plant.

(boat engine roaring) - There's a history of manipulating the system that we're trying to reverse today to maintain our native trout.

So we're working on a landscape level conservation project in which we're trying to maintain and restore native cutthroat and bull trout in Flathead Lake.

Doing this is very expensive.

So, in 2017, we decided we need to do this perpetually.

And we realized we needed to make these fish pay for themselves.

So we began Native Fish Keepers, a corporation incorporated by the tribal government.

And it is Native Fish Keepers that then independently oversees the marketing and sale of the fish that we catch.

(forklift engine roaring) - [Joe] We'll have an employee will take and count the fish.

So once they've been counted, they'll take and they'll remove the heads from the fish.

And once they heads have been removed and we'll start feeding them through our fillet machine, which has four blades on the fillet machine, first blade cuts the belly open.

Second blade removes the entrails.

Third blade takes out the backbone.

Fourth blade takes off the rib bones and then two perfect fillets come out at the end of the machine.

Once we have a tote of lake trout fillets, those fillets will be put on a table and there will be four people on the table pin-boning, which is to find bone that's in the center of the fillet and trim off the tail, trim the belly fat off.

And once that is put into another bin, another little tote, it gets moved over to our packaging machine and each fillet will get individually packaged.

Put on the machine, vacuum packed, sealed, put on a tray and moved right into the freezer portion of our process.

(machine rumbling) - So this has been a long journey.

It hasn't been easy and not everybody has supported it.

So, I guess trying to achieve this goal has kept me going and having been committed to this for so long and seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, we see significant reduction in the lake trout population and we see the early signs of the native fish rebound.

So that's all very rewarding and it's a strong commitment that I'd like to see through.

(boat engine roaring) - Bull trout, cutthroat, whitefish, suckers, northern pikeminnow, those were all food sources for Native people in the area.

So, it's significance to the tribe is very, very high.

I mean, there are cultural sites on the lake that signify that our ancestors have been here and will always be here.

(boat engine roaring) - Lisa was doing candles and cute little cups and I was into making art with beer cans.

And one day, she was sitting there doing candles and it was just, we've started trying it in beer cans and it was just.. We kinda like, almost met in the middle.

Hi, my name's Nolan Michel and our business is Sunshine Can-dles.

So our inspiration behind starting our business, we left the Midwest and suburbia to come out to Montana to be able to kinda just get back to, you know, get back to basics and be able to enjoy family-- - Years ago, shopping for Made In Montana products.

I had a hard time finding things that were made here and not in China that represented Montana.

So, when we moved out here, I wanted to be an artist and work with my hands.

So we started working with Big Sky Brewing Company.

Putting candles into their craft brewery beer cans.

So they were pretty instrumental in helping us get our business off the ground And then we branched out to other breweries and wineries and now we're making our own labels on our own bottles and cans as well.

- The can itself is...

It's been used once and then you just discard it but it could be reused again.

My connections to, I guess, the earth and the environment, you know, I see, ways that we have to reduce what we're using and also find ways to reuse the things that we're using and the resources that we're using.

When you think about Native Americans and their constant struggled to survive, I guess, you just have to constantly take every opportunity that you have and make the best of it because there's all these things that we don't have control of and we just have to learn how to, you know, continue to exist in this ever-changing world.

- [Lisa] We use high-end ingredients like soy wax and fragrance and essential oils.

And we've done extensive testing with all of our products to make sure it's a good product that people wanna buy.

And the production takes place here in our workshop at our home.

And I like to have the whole family involved and it's grown so much that I can't do it by myself anyways so Nolan helps with the shows and logistics and marketing.

And we've got the kids involved with everything from creating labels to tagging and going to the shows as well.

- [Kelly] Hi, my name is Kelly Michel and my role in the business is packaging and putting labels on the candles.

One of my favorite parts of helping with the business is being able to travel and being able to help my mom.

It's nice to be able to spend time with her.

- [Lisa] We've been doing the Made in Montana Trade Shows for about 10 years now.

The Made In Montana program supports us pretty well.

They allow us to come and do the trade shows every year.

And so we gain quite a bit of wholesale business through their program and doing that trade show every year.

We could use some more support as far as expanding our workshop.

- People that have just discovered us they sit there and just smell every candle basically.

It takes 'em a while to make a final product decision.

The family aspect of our business is awesome.

It goes way above and beyond our business.

The skills that our kids learn, I mean, they could take anywhere with them throughout their whole entire life.

So, and you know, outside of that, we get to bond together.

We get to work together.

We have a lot of crazy adventures on the road going to shows and setting up and talking to people and I'll put our efforts towards making a great product for people.

And it's a lot of hard work but we have fun doing it.

So, it's a great experience for our family.

(gentle music) - What makes my art special?

The fact that it comes from the heart.

It comes from prayers.

And it comes from giving to others, giving to my community.

My name's Lola Wippert.

I'm an enrolled Blackfeet member from the Blackfeet tribe.

And I live in Browning, Montana.

My Blackfeet name is Iniskimauki which means buffalo stone women.

And my ribbon skirt shop, if you call it that is called Iniskimauki Designs.

I come from a family of sewers.

My mom sewed.

My grandma's sewed and I have an aunt who sewed and ran a sewing shop.

And I worked for her a couple of summers in that sewing shop and she taught me a lot.

Back in 19... About the mid 1990s, I kinda quit sewing for a while.

And one day I was out cleaning my shed and I had three bins of fabric and I was looking at it and I thought, I need to do something with this.

I gotta get back into sewing.

And I lifted up some native fabric and I thought ribbon skirts.

I'll make ribbon skirts.

And I never intended to have it as a business.

I just thought I'd use up my fabric and make ribbon skirts.

And I can make, oh, gosh!

20-30 dresses a month.

You take and you just measure out your ribbons on your fabric, the length that you want.

Match 'em up.

I always try to match my ribbons with my fabric.

And then sew the strips first, the ribbons first, and then I sew up the sides of the fabric and fold over for your elastic and your hemp and put the elastic in.

It was a learning process for me to really get it down because when you're making skirts for other people, there's so many shapes and sizes and heights and widths.

And so you kinda learn along the way.

I make skirts and I've made, they call 'em tea dresses.

They're for ceremony.

Ceremony dresses.

I've made the tops and then the skirt with it.

I make onesie sets for babies from three to 24 months.

(sewing machine rumbling) Probably a year and a half into my ribbon skirts and one of my friends mentioned it to me.

They said, you should sign up for the Native American Made In Montana.

So I did, I looked it up on the internet and then I applied for it.

And I put those little round, they give you those little round Native signs that...

I put those on all my skirts.

And it's just that recognition that that my product is made by a Native American.

'Cause when I cut out a skirt I put this tag on them.

It tells size.

I didn't apply for credit even when I started, I just used my own money.

Because it's always so hard to apply for a loan.

It could be intimidating as a woman and being as Native American.

Because people just tell you you're just gonna fail.

You're not gonna... You'll only last a couple of years, if even that.

But I'm determined, I know I can do this.

(sewing machine rumbling) To me, my business means that I'm giving the opportunity for all Native, from babies, all the way up, Native women, empowerment through ribbon skirts.

Our ancestors wore ribbon skirts along with their buckskin skirts.

Their dresses, I meant, not skirts.

And when you wear a ribbon skirt, it is empowering.

It makes you feel so, so good about yourself.

It's a whole different experience than putting on a pair of jeans.

(gentle music) (gentle upbeat music)