[dreamy ambient music] - [Greg] We were originally from the city of New Bern, [drums beating] and we were called the Neusiok.

That was our aboriginal origin.

Colonial conflict, intertribal warfare, European diseases caused us to have to leave our hometown, and we were looking at a place to survive.

Running for your life, and you get to a place that you feel is safe enough that you can stop running, and you can raise your children.

You can practice your ways, and you can exercise your pursuit to happiness.

When we found the Coharie River, we stopped running.

We were home.

[hopeful music] - So my mom and dad and I grew up in this area, and I work from home now.

And because I work from home, sometimes you gotta get outside of your house, or you're gonna go crazy.

So I came and asked my uncle one day, Greg, who was the administrator, "Is it okay if I come and just sit at my computer and work sometimes?"

'cause they had the internet.

And they said, "Hey, this is not my building.

This is the people's buildings."

I could have this information wrong, but this used to be the school way back.

- I went to school here during integration.

I'll take a picture of my mom and dad here, which strength I work off of.

But they didn't have the opportunity for a high school education.

Society didn't give him an opportunity except for a seventh-grade education.

You were done with school.

There was no more opportunity.

He went to school at our churches that were formed in our community or maybe at somebody's house that was formed because the government didn't supply money for Native American children to go to school.

In 1943, some of the dominant society got together with our communities and said, "Listen, the people are people of integrity, and their Native American children need the opportunity to get education."

The money was appropriated in 1943.

This was the first high school for Native American children in a seven-county area.

They would come and live with our families, go to school here.

We would take them back home on the weekends or at the holidays.

It operated successfully till 1965, when integration came to be.

But it was so important to us that we didn't give up wanting ownership of this school because it's a mark of progress for Native American people.

And in 1982, the old dilapidated building was given back to the Coharie Tribe as a facility.

So what you're seeing is us rehabilitating this old building that's such full of spirit I can hear the pitter-patter of the little children.

They came to school here.

- Anyway, I started coming here one day a week just to get out of the house.

Greg asked me to sit on a meeting.

- They had a grant for public art.

It was our opportunity to present to the public in art form and make this the best-looking facility on Highway 421.

It is very prideful for me.

- Everyone pitched in their thoughts of what they think they could do, from a mural to sculptures.

I said, "Okay, congratulations guys, go do it."

Four months later, "So we need you to head this up."

I said, "Head what up?"

But because it was my family, my uncle and so forth, I took this thing on.

- So that's what we're gonna do through this year's art program.

You're gonna see the real Coharie.

[tribal members chanting] [drums beating] - I really wasn't involved with the Coharie folks as a kid, but coming back as a grown man, I've now connected back into something that I just never participated in.

- The second weekend in September of each year, the Coharie tribe holds its powwow on the grounds.

[drums continue beating] Tribes from all over the state of North Carolina come together in collaboration.

We dance.

We sing.

- I came, and I was watching, and I kept thinking to myself, "You know," I'm thinking, "What are they doing this for?"

"Well, what's the motivation?"

And so when I watched that, I said, "This is all about just keeping us alive so we won't forget who we are."

- [Greg] We share our culture with the Lumbees with the Waccamaw Siouans.

Our children get to know each other and bond together.

So it's just a beautiful atmosphere of people getting along, peace in one accord.

- I feel proud to be back.

Though I didn't dance, you know, and I wasn't a part of it as a kid that this is my way of giving back to bring attention to the Coharie folks, which is my family, my roots, my people.

If this comes out the way that I hope it does, this will become a visual epicenter for Sampson County.

[uplifting music] So they figured out it was a sculpture, and there's two murals.

You see murals, but, you know, then I started paying attention.

- Can you look over there again a little bit?

- [Keith] And there was this one woman named Taylor White.

- I'm not supposed to touch it?

Oh, I'm sorry.

- And I looked at her impressive body of work.

I said, "This woman can paint anything."

- What is that?

- Otters.

- Otter?

- [Keith] Meaning no matter what design we land on where it includes a lot of faces, a lot of figures, could be animals, it could be forests.

- [Attendee] This is the traditional regalia, and I'm the Miss Indigenous North Carolina.

- [Attendee] Are those eagle feathers?

- Yep, they're bald eagle feathers.

- [Attendee] Bald eagle feathers, hooray.

- She had the skillset to cover any subject.

[attendees chanting] [rhythmic percussion music] But then when I started looking for sculpture, when I first discovered Paris, he had some pieces there at the Wake County hospitals.

And I pressed against... I said, "Man, I feel like God Himself would have to move this thing."

I said, "That's what I want to have so it feels like gravity like if we brought a mountain to this area."

- I have now reached a point where I'm looking for things that are going to be really meaningful.

When this one popped up, it was just like, "Man, that sounds awesome."

Wow, this tribe, so they're down this line of long-term educating their community.

And so I thought this needs to be something that is gonna be a legacy piece for me to do.

It's an honor.

It's a privilege.

[hammer tapping] [gentle upbeat music] - Well, I couldn't even go to sleep 'cause I was thinking, "What are we gonna do with this wall?"

And somewhere about three or four in the morning, I said, "That's it."

We need to do something more than just images.

Let's just brand this whole thing as Coharie and design everything around the letters.

People came in with sketches.

People came in with photos.

But we boiled it down to what's gonna represent the Coharie people.

- A lot of times people don't realize or don't know that there are tribes in the area.

My family from Mexico's from a tribe in Mexico, but, you know, there's also tribal roots here, so we're all connected.

It's important for recognition and acknowledgement that the tribes that were living here are still living here.

The culture is vibrant and alive.

- Good job.

- Yeah, wonderful.

- Like, I can see the C right there and the O. Do you see it a little bit?

- Mm-mm.

- [Lisa] No?

You don't see that C?

Look.

- And let me tell you, this girl can paint fast.

The way she would put that [imitates paint can hissing], I feel like I'd have to stand back a mile to see, does that look right?

But no, she's up there just [imitates paint can hissing].

Had so much headgear on, she looked like Darth Vader.

I didn't know how she could even see the wall.

Top-notch, man.

- And their creativity was where we came from and where we're at now, [drums beating] the drum and the boys sitting around it, beating that drum in unison.

It's like the heartbeat of Mother Earth radiating out our culture.

Another thing is that river.

We were running from pain.

We were running from death, and the Coharie River presented itself.

It had food.

It had love.

Every year we carry thousands down the great Coharie River in tourism.

If you'll see that church with that steeple, that is of ultimate importance to us.

It was the support that we stood on that got us from poverty to prosperity.

The sorghum is more than the food that we produce.

It's maintaining communities, people helping people, working together.

And then there's the revival of our culture.

We did not lose our culture as a Native American people.

We just put it safely away, and the day has come that we can take that culture back out from where we placed it.

The youth are teaching the elders, and the elders are teaching the youth, "We can tell our story now."

- When it first came up, I drove by it many times.

I said, "Man."

I was very happy.

Something like this is huge here, and then one element we're leaving out, and that's gonna be the sculpture.

- I've carved a few feathers for different situations, but this one I think is really the most apt and really sort of though about it from that spiritual sense.

[hammer tapping] Some parts I'll leave basically where it's just rough hewn-out stone.

I just, boom, hit it just right where you're knocking out big chunks.

As I'm carving the waves of the feather, 'cause I want this feather to sort of look like it's flowing in the wind, so I want all those different textures to be on there.

- [Keith] We commissioned Paris to do the feather only.

- [Paris] Well, I saw that they had a logo.

It's really special to them.

I can turn that into stone.

- He wanted to do it.

I said, "Dude, you added work to yourself."

Had a week when we have our summer camp here.

- So, can you tell what this is maybe gonna be?

- It's gonna be a batter.

- Is it gonna be a fish?

- [Children] Batter.

- I'm gonna bring out that piece of stone with a drawing on it, and I'm gonna have places designated for people to hit.

[hammer tapping] Voila.

And now just a little bit of angle shift.

The kids were picking up the chips of rocks.

There you go.

Or they wanted to save them, and they're getting little plastic bags, and I think that's really cool.

Make it really bang.

Hopefully some of these kids 30, 40 years from now will think, "Yeah, I helped make that."

[hammer tapping] Yeah, nice!

And the stone that you've taken off right now was there for millions of years.

- Yes.

- And we're changing it, and then it's gonna be up on that wall right outside here for hundreds of years to come.

- It's probably hard to tell from this camera, but he recreated our logo, and he did a fantastic job.

So today is that's the installation of Paris' sculpture.

It's an event here for us and the Coharie people.

- [Paris] Half the buildings you look at in downtowns all over North Carolina are from the same exact stone.

You want this to be nice and archival.

It'll stand the test of time.

[upbeat music] [installers speaking faintly] - [Greg] And I looked at that beautifully carved granite, and it was our creation just the way we wanted it.

- Over here is my uncle.

During his time, man, they just struggled to, could they even go to a restaurant and eat and drink?

No, they couldn't do that, you know, but back in those days it was a different time.

Now there's opportunities that wasn't available back then when my mom and dad grew up.

- [Greg] What happened today was a beautiful expression of freedom for the Coharie tribe.

- As an artist, as a project manager, as a Coharie member, this is really good.

- [Attendee] Look here, Daddy.

- [Keith] We've done something.

- It was a dream come true for my dad.

It was a dream come true for me.

- Something like this is huge here.

Something like that wall, that's the biggest art installation in this whole county.

- [Greg] People's gonna look at these murals, and they're gonna look at that statue.

They're gonna tell a neighbor, and they're gonna drive from the cities and the different places to take a view at this story.

I think it's gonna be one that'll touch your soul.

[uplifting music]