Traditional carvers create trophies for Micronesian tournament

Transcript

A group of traditional carvers from a small atoll in Federated States of Micronesia say they're honoured to have been selected to create the trophies for their state's annual sports tournament.

The Yap games attracts about 900 athletes from across the state, who compete in a dozen sports.

Larry Reigetal is one of the carvers from Lamotrek Atoll, he told Jamie Tahana the distinctive trophies are modelled on the Micronesian outrigger canoes and take about four days to make using traditional methods.

LARRY REIGETAL: It brings all the athletes from all throughout the state of Yap to compete in various sports.  A couple of hundred athletes are here now during these games. Different sports from water to track and field and baseball and stuff.

JAMIE TAHANA: So you and a group of others are making the trophies for these using what you say are your cultural and traditional skills. Just take us through how you go about making these and what they look like?

LR: Yes so what we designed which was approved by the sports council was actually using, modelling the trophies after the traditional Yapese canoes. So we just kind of take the ending part of the canoe. The end part that we attach to our main canoe we call it the touch in our traditional language it is basically the four toas at the end of the canoe and we have it standing on a wooden frame. This is all wooden carved model with metal actually attached to them. So we got three different colours to it the complete colour which has the black and red that is usually the typical canoe colours for us that would be for the gold medallist. The plain black coloured one wood is the silver and then we have just got the plain same type of model for the bronze. So carving this it also gives our boys to learn this carving because it is practical an important component of our canoes. Traditional canoes  being used here.

JT: And you are carving it all traditionally and stuff too. How long does it take and what kind of process do you go through to create this trophy based on the outriggers?

LR: Usually for one piece that we would carve, one piece of the trophy would take at least a couple of days, four days I would say to carve out one complete one. Because we have to make sure that the lines are drawn and they are followed. We are using only hand tools. Carving with our hand tools. Traditional adze and then for the finishing we have to give it to one of these guys who really know how to do the finishing measurement on it and complete it.