Apaches praise 'The Missing' for keeping their language alive (fwd)

[Phil CashCash]

Apaches praise 'The Missing' for keeping their language alive

By Richard Benke
The Associated Press
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Dec/12182003/thursday/120921.asp

    SANTA FE, N.M. -- Tommy Lee Jones speaking Apache? Word swept
through the Mescalero reservation like an early winter wind.
    Not only Jones but most characters in the Ron Howard film, "The
Missing," speak the Chiricahua dialect of Apache, and most adult
Apaches in the audiences have said they could understand every word.
    The children, who couldn't, suddenly wished they could.
    That's what Mescalero councilman Berle Kanseah and Chiricahua
linguist Elbys Hugar intended as technical advisers for "The Missing,"
a tough tale of 19th century frontier life starring Tommy Lee Jones and
Cate Blanchett.
    The 21st century -- television, popular culture -- is killing
minority cultures, starting with language, Kanseah said.
    "There's a generation gap that's growing," he said, suggesting
Apaches aren't the only ones facing it.
    "We need to enforce the home and not lose our way of life, which is
our language," he said.
    Hugar, a great-granddaughter of Cochise, addressed the cast before
shooting. Co-star Jay Tavere, a White Mountain Apache, recalled: "This
is the first thing that Elbys said to us: 'This is more than a movie --
this is for the whole Apache nation.' "
    It was the first film that any of them could remember in which
Apache was spoken well enough on screen to be understood. Usually,
Westerns were dubbed in Navajo, said supporting actor Steve Reevis, a
Montana Blackfoot who has worked several films but never spoke Apache
before "The Missing."
    The film is set in southwestern New Mexico in 1885, just as the last
of the Apache conflict was ending. Jones' granddaughter -- Blanchett's
daughter -- is abducted by a ragged band of Indians and whites who sell
women into slavery in Mexico.
    New Mexico college student and rodeo competitor Yolanda Nez, a
Navajo, plays a captive who is Apache. Her father, Tavere, and Jones
set out to keep the slavers from reaching Mexico.
    The slavers are led by a "brujo," a medicine man gone bad, played by
Eric Schweig. Combat between Jones and Tavere and Schweig is
inevitable.
    The border slave trade is historically factual, producer Daniel
Ostroff said.
    University of New Mexico historian Paul Hutton, who also consulted
on the film, concurred.
    "Indeed people were being kidnapped all the time," Hutton said.
    Apaches appreciate the film for showing them as they were -- the
good and the bad, family-oriented, generous, faithful to their religion
and good-humored. The brujo played by Schweig is not intended to be
Apache, though he speaks Apache, the producers say.
    Many Apaches have gone back two and three times to see "The
Missing," Kanseah said. The producers gave a screening for 500
Mescalero students in Alamogordo last month, and the tribe has been
busing students to theaters in nearby Ruidoso. Two more screenings were
held here recently for hundreds more students from several tribes who
attend Santa Fe Indian School and other tribal schools in the
surrounding area.
    "It made me feel proud," said Megan Crespin, 8, a 3rd grader from
Santo Domingo School. Her tribal name is Moonlight.
    Desiree Aguilar, 14, is fluent in Keres, the native tongue of Santo
Domingo Pueblo. She watched the film with an analytical eye.
    "It was very intense," the 9th grader said. "It kept you wanting to
watch it."
    Kevin Aspaas, 8, a Navajo student said he liked the hawk that led
Tommy Lee Jones back to his family. "I really enjoyed it -- it was a
scary and cool movie," he said.
    While the last screening played to the students, Kanseah, Nez and
Tavere made some comparisons among Navajo and Apache dialects, all of
which stem from the Athabaskan root language common to a number of
North American tribes.
    During the film, even Tommy Lee Jones' grasp of the language was
understandable to Apaches and many Navajos.
    "He spoke Apache well enough for every Chiricahua in the audience to
understand," said New Mexico State University anthropologist Scott
Rushforth, who also consulted on the film and attended several
screenings.
    But there aren't that many Chiricahuas left. They were rounded up
and sent to Florida in 1886, shunted back to Alabama, Oklahoma and
finally to the Mescalero homeland in south-central New Mexico in 1913.
    "There are only about 300 people who are fluent in Chiricahua
today," Tavere said.