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Transcription: [00:04:15]
{SPEAKER name="Denise Freeland"}
the fancy braided breads.

[00:04:16]
{SPEAKER name="Susie Jones"}
Someone's taken a lot of time, paid a lot of attention to symmetry and to design, and you realize how rich our daily lives are if we practice our traditional folk arts.

[00:04:26]
{SPEAKER name="Denise Freeland"}
Susie Jones, organizer of the exhibition Web Foots and Bunch Grassers: Folk Art of the Oregon Country, is now working on native arts programs in Alaska. Reporting from the Smithsonian Institution, I'm Denise Freeland.
[[Galaxy theme music]]]

[00:04:41]
{SILENCE}

[00:04:52]
{SPEAKER name="Denise Freeland"}
Crusading to Save the Old Finnish Ways. From the Smithsonian Institution this is Smithsonian Galaxy. The fact that Marvin Salo weaves baskets isn't all that unusual. But the fact that he weaves them out of birch bark is. At the Smithsonian's recent festival of American folklife, Marvin demonstrated the centuries old Finnish craft, weaving thin strips of bark into everything from snow shoes to hand bags. Mr. Salo explained that he begins by skinning the bark off the tree.

[00:05:27]
{SPEAKER name="Marvin Salo"}
[[background noise of festival crowd]]
You take a knife and you cut a little wedge in it, and then you take a piece of wood and you follow the backside of the bark and keep going around the tree as you take it off.

[00:05:36]
{SPEAKER name="Denise Freeland"}
Items woven from birch bark look like they're made from wood, but feel soft and pliable like leather. And Marvin says he doesn't even have to treat the bark to give it that velvety texture.

[00:05:46]
{SPEAKER name="Marvin Salo"}
[[background noise of festival crowd]]
Birch bark has a certain amount of oil in it. You can make a birch bark hat and this hat will keep the rain out. You can drop this into water and it will float.

[00:05:55]
{SPEAKER name="Denise Freeland"}
Marvin Salo came to the folk life festival partly to meet other Fins. He spent the last few years trying to document the authentic techniques of Finnish crafts. Though he's never been to Finland himself, first generation immigrants tell him his style of birch bark weaving comes right from the old country.

[00:06:13]
{SPEAKER name="Marvin Salo"}
[[background noise of festival crowd]]
I learned it from my great uncle. He believed in the way he had been brought up from his ancestors had taught this way of survival and he taught this same method to me. But our environment has changed so much since 1927 that naturally I wouldn't need these anymore.

[00:06:30]
{SPEAKER name="Denise Freeland"}
But need or not, Mr. Salo is dedicated to his craft
[00:06:34]

Transcription Notes:
Guest speaker is Marvin Salo, name and spelling confirmed here: https://sirismm.si.edu/EADpdfs/CFCH.SFF.1980.pdf "STEP FIVE: When the entire segment is transcribed and the recording has reached the end of the segment, insert a final timestamp." last line--a pause before the word "craft"--seems to be missing a word or 2