Apaches pack premier of 'The Missing' (fwd)

Thu Nov 27 19:55:33 UTC 2003

Apaches pack premier of 'The Missing'

By Ellis Neel/ Staff Photographer/ Writer
Nov 26, 2003, 11:59 am
http://www.alamogordonews.com/artman/publish/article_1955.shtml

Ellis Neel/ Daily News - Jay Tavare, who plays Kayitah in director Ron
Howard's latest movie "The Missing," attends a screening of the film at
the White Sands Mall Tuesday night.

Director Ron Howard’s latest film, “The Missing,” was screened in
Alamogordo at the White Sands Mall with a “special Apache Premier” to a
packed house of Chiricahua and Mescalero Apaches Tuesday.

Producer Daniel Ostroff, Jay Tavare, who plays Kayitah, an Apache
medicine man and Tommy Lee Jones’ sidekick, and Yolanda Nez, who played
a captive girl in the film, were on hand for the screening.

The invitation states the premier was held “in honor of and with respect
for Mrs. Elbys Hugar and Mr. Berle Kanseah, advisers and translators
for the film.”
Howard chose the Allen 5 Theater because “it’s the closest theater to
the home of our two advisers and translators,” said producer Daniel
Ostroff. “It was his (Howard’s) first impulse.”

Kanseah and Hugar, who live on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, were
instrumental in the film’s realism, teaching actors the Chiricahua
Apache language and helping with their dialogue.

There was a world premier in New York and another in Santa Fe, but
“emotionally, this is it,” Ostroff said. “This is the best.

“They advised us,” Ostroff said of the translators. “Ron had always
wanted to make a western and make one in a classic place (like New
Mexico).”

Kanseah and Hugar were contracted because in the world the actors in the
story inhabited, the people they would have seen were the Chiricahua.

“They were the only free Indians left,” Ostroff said. “(It’s) not a film
about Indians and they weren’t a dominant aspect. (The characters in
the story) would have encountered Apaches (and we wanted to get it
right).”
The film, a story about a man played by Tommy Lee Jones who leaves his
family to live with the Indians, is a thriller which blends classical
western and supernatural elements.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen an Apache portrayed in such a
three-dimensional way,” Tavare said. “I think Ron Howard has really
struck a chord (with the even, unbiased portrayal of the Apache).”

Tavare has Native American blood running through his veins. His mother
was a White Mountain Apache.
“Elbys is a great-granddaughter of Cochise,” Tavare said. “It was an
honor to have a princess working with us to capture the language. It
truly is an impossible language to master.”

Only 300 people in the world can speak fluent Chiricahua Apache, Tavare
said. “And three of them were on the set of the film. The film is
ground breaking in many ways. It’s a must-see movie. Anytime you break
stereotypes ....”

Yolanda Nez, a Farmington native and 2002 graduate of Farmington High
School, plays the captive girl in the movie. Nez, an experienced rodeo
competitor, says she tried out for the part because she was “at the
point in life where I wanted to experience (different things). I think
it’s a great opportunity.”

Hugar says she “always took (her) language as something that’s been
given to us, as Chiricahua Apaches. I respect the language a lot. Doing
the translating, I learned from the anthropologist ... (We) worked
together many times. We came up with two (Chiricahua Apache/English)
dictionaries. I like my job translating Indian to English. We’re losing
our language. A lot of these young children, when they start school,
they know the English already.” It was different for Elbys as a child
because she learned Apache first and had difficulty learning English,
she said.

Before the screening, Hugar offered a greeting to Ron Howard: “Well,
first, I want to say a big fat hello to him,” then spoke a message
first in Chiricahua Apache and then in English.