[bright music]
- Can you say, "Good morning, Therman."
- In unison: Good morning, Therman.
- My name is, my name is Therman Statom.
[kids chattering]
- Therman is a great artist.
He works very well with our pre-K kids.
He has fun with them and he just tries to teach their culture
'cause a lot of our kids
don't know the Native American culture.
- Our class is part of the NICE program
in the Omaha public schools.
NICE stands for Native Indigenous Centered Education.
Every child in our pre-K classroom
has some measure of Native blood in them.
- This program is very important because Native Americans
are still suffering the effects of some of the issues
that came after the boarding school experience
and help students reconnect to who they are.
- My grandma and grandpa, when they got sent off to schools,
they weren't allowed to speak their language.
Their hair was all cut off, just cruel stuff.
- Does anyone know how to draw a buffalo?
I'm hoping what they learn is just the idea that
the education reinforces family as opposed to separating family,
that every Native American parent today is concerned about.
I feel part advocate and I feel part artist.
I think that teaching is the highest form
of advocacy you could do
in terms of influencing the world
or having a chance to be a part of something
that you can change.
Okay, not too thick, see, I make...
I've evolved towards teaching
as part of a process to give what I do more meaning.
[bright music]
I think I'd describe myself
as a painter, sculptor, craftsperson.
When I went to school, there were lots of debates
about art and craft, and particularly in the glass field.
I guess some of the objects are,
they're almost like canvases, three-dimensional canvases.
[gentle string music]
[brushstrokes]
Generally within the studio,
there's as many as 20 pieces that are being worked on.
I just like exploring,
and I made a commitment to the fine arts
because I could explore, I can write, I can be a poet.
I can listen to that poetry and translate that poetry
into a visual object on my own terms.
Ultimately, all of it has to do with some form of communication.
And I get to explore that.
And there's a certain responsibility
that comes with that.
[bright string music]
I'm creating an outdoor classroom.
The huge part of Native American philosophy
is to be outdoors.
What we're gonna do is turn this medicine wheel
and expand it sort of into a seating element
and make it into a bench.
The actual stone will stay there,
but the center stones won't, and there'll be four segments
so that you'd actually be able to walk in from here
and then sit down here.
- Paula: The medicine wheel for Native Americans
is a healing place, is a place where they bring stresses
and pains in their lives to the circle to be healed.
- And community members come and share stories
about their history for the first time
in the school system.
We're gonna get this clay
and you're gonna press your hands into it,
and then we're gonna have a shape.
- Recording: When a bear walks in the mud...
- No, don't push it.
And then what we're gonna do is,
guess what I'm gonna do with this shape?
I'm gonna pour a hot glass in here
and it's gonna turn really hard.
And those get put into the top of the bench
and it gets ground to a polish.
So they'll be able to see all their hands
floating in a pattern throughout the bench.
[people chatting]
What I'm hoping to instill
is a true Native American resource
through a more experiential point of view,
where working with materials is a whole different language.
These kids have never put their hands in clay
and then, you know, come springtime,
they're gonna see it in glass and they can find their hands.
- For her little hands to be on the wheel
and other little kids' hands on the wheel,
I think is really good
because it's always a connection tied there.
- Paula: Position your hands to balance...
- The kids have a better sense of place and they have fun.
And they're in a school.
That's better than what happened 30 years ago,
where they were, their hair was cut off
and they were separated from their family.
And by the time we're done with the medicine wheel,
the kids will have a connection to an educational institution
that will change their point of view
of what happens when they go to school.
And all those sensibilities
come from my involvement with the crafts.
[machine whirring]
There's a core connection of craft
that connects to our inner being,
and with every craft medium,
there's sort of a hidden language.
It's odd what parts do work as opposed to what don't work
because there's such an abstraction
of the objects themselves.
Betsy was the first female Black aviator.
I'm gonna probably define who she was
in the piece with the title.
And part of what I'm gonna be doing
is exploring advocacy through titles.
Like I could call this,
They Don't Allow Black Women To Do That .
[gentle string music]
You know, I'm sort of a cultural mutt.
I've got, I think, a little bit of everybody in me.
I'm born Afro-American.
I was raised in a white Jewish neighborhood.
When I get involved with other cultures,
I have tools that not many people have.
You gotta go up.
- Therman's probably one of the greatest mentors
I ever met in my life.
He never gives up.
- Stain it.
[brushstrokes]
- I never had much experience with art until I met Therman.
I mean, I always think I had it in me, but you know,
nobody really pushed it out of me except Therman,
I'll tell you that.
- And just do the whole thing all the way around like that.
Ty is training to be sort of a long-term assistant.
It's great 'cause he's tall and strong
with incredible resources that he has within himself
that he doesn't know about.
- I was born in South Sudan.
We lived there for seven years, moved to Ethiopia.
From Ethiopia, we moved on to Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A.
From Tennessee, we moved in to Omaha, Nebraska.
So we've been here now for 15 years.
- Omaha has the largest Sudanese refugee community
outside of Sudan, and once I became aware of it,
I had an interest in what happens
to displaced populations,
particularly of something so recent.
I thought, "How do you help these groups become successful?
How can their cultural heritage enrich ours?"
- We're the new face of what makes America special.
We're the new form of immigrants, you know,
and America has always been refreshed, you know,
by just a fresh wave of new ideas,
a new way of doing things, a new way of seeing the world.
And I can clearly see that within our community.
- Hi, I'm Therman. - I'm Natalia.
- Koang: With Therman, it's all been about educating.
- Hi, I'm Therman, thanks for coming.
- Koang: Not just the kids, but the teachers.
How do we get the teachers to understand the African culture
and some of the things that are going on
with their Sudanese students,
of how do we create those opportunities
for kids from different communities to be in one place
where they can actually interact with each other?
- You just walked into what I call a free zone.
And by that, I mean that at this point,
everything that you think you can't do, you can do.
- The students here are from North High School.
And some of them are connected through an organization
called Communities in Schools,
which is a dropout prevention program,
and Communities in Schools is a program
really focused on finding the resources
to help students stay in school and graduate.
- Each of us is gonna be given a box
as an item to work on.
You can finish it here or you can finish it at home.
The sandblasted surface is, obviously, adds textured, huh?
You can draw on it, just like... - Student: Can I ask a question?
- Yes, you can. - I think they always think
that things have to look absolutely perfect.
How many feel like that for real?
[Rita laughs] - No way.
You gotta be kidding me.
- So serious. - So serious.
- You all that serious? - Students: Yes.
- Rita: Then why do you think everything has to be perfect?
- Because perfection is key. - Perfection is key.
- Like if you don't have perfection,
then you don't have nothing.
- So this is so... - It's so prevalent.
- Right. - You actually can't mess up
because the worst thing that could happen is
in the process of messing up, you actually learn
and you refine your aesthetics of what that is.
At this point, you should cut loose and just discover
how big you are and just go for it.
- They are totally amazed about having this opportunity
to kind of work with him and to get his knowledge.
It inspires me because I see what it can do for them
later on in school.
- So right now it's opaque, right?
Look what happens when...
- Rita: I've seen students find a talent
that they didn't realize they had
and all of a sudden, they realize that
they can do something with their lives.
- Even if they're not gonna be an artist down the line,
these kids are, they're gonna benefit from it.
- Therman: You know, with the Sudanese community,
a success will be the Afro-American kids
working with the Sudanese kids
and communicating with each other
in dealing with the beauty of their differences.
Another will be just the exposure
to the fact that you can be expressive
and that you have a right to be expressive.
[bright music]
- We have a colored person in the background
because it's always colored person in the background
and white people at the front, and they always come first
and sees us different.
- The subject is pretty provocative
about white in front of Black or Mexican...
Another success is the kids just having fun
and making things and feeling whole.
Get to the end, get to the end, go to the end.
That's it, it's on you.
All right, blow, blow on it.
Blow, blow, blow, blow, blow.
Blow, blow, blow, blow, blow, blow, keep going!
[laughs] - That was hard!
- She's got good hands.
- It's one thing to be in a place like America
and pursue the American dream and live a beautiful life.
But it's another thing to have a purpose,
you know, to change lives,
you know, and to be able to actually make a difference
and add meaning to people's lives.
And that's what Therman does every day.
- See the shape, look at the shape, huh?
This is her first time doing it.
Pretty nice shape, it's a pretty sculptural shape, huh?
We're not worried about messing it up, right?
And look what we discovered, huh?
Excellent, excellent job.