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Apaches Praise 'The Missing' for Accuracy

Tue Dec 16, 9:41 AM ET

By RICHARD BENKE, Associated Press Writer

SANTA FE, N.M. - Word swept through the Mescalero reservation like an
early winter wind that characters in the film "The Missing" spoke a
dialect of Apache.

Most adult Apaches in the audiences have said they could understand
every word of the Chiricahua dialect — and the children suddenly wished
they could, too.

That's what Mescalero councilman Berle Kanseah and Chiricahua linguist
Elbys Hugar intended as technical advisers for the Ron Howard (news)
film, a tough tale of 19th century frontier life starring Tommy Lee
Jones (news) and Cate Blanchett (news) that has been in theaters for
about three weeks.

Television and popular culture are 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."

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, a related language, 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. The Jones character's granddaughter,
Blanchett's daughter, is abducted by a ragged band of American Indians
and whites who sell women into slavery in Mexico. Jones and co-star Jay
Tavere 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.

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 Sunday
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 third-grader from
Santo Domingo School. Her tribal name is Moonlight.

Kevin Aspaas, 8, a Navajo student said he liked the hawk that led Jones
back to his family. He is learning Navajo and said a few words in his
native tongue.

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 told the audience Sunday.