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Angela Cara Pancrazio
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 13, 2005 12:00 AM Hugging his skateboard, Doug
Miles Jr. squeezes his lean frame through a sliver of an opening between a brick wall and a locked gate on the San Carlos
Reservation.
A few steps later, the 17-year-old pushes off into the concrete bowl and goes airborne.
Nothing can match what he feels as he soars, he says, challenging
gravity as he grips his skateboard with his feet, his arms outstretched for balance, like the hawks that glide through the
nearby passes of the San Carlos Mountains.
Your mind's clear for a couple of seconds while you're in the
air," says Miles, a high school senior in Globe. "It's a feeling I can't describe. I can't stop."
Although basketball has long been the king of sports on American Indian reservations, skateboarding is becoming increasingly
popular. Miles and a growing number of Native American youths crave concrete over hoops.
The trend has caused tribes
from the San Carlos and the Navajo reservations, from the pueblos of New Mexico to the Cheyenne River Reservation in South
Dakota, to erect skate parks to accommodate their youths' new passion.
Before the new San Carlos skate park
was built, Miles and his friends cobbled together old car fenders and scrap metal for their makeshift park at the reservation's
basketball court. So it's hard now to keep them out of the new skate park until its official January debut.
Farther
north on the Navajo Reservation, three communities have installed larger recreational skate parks made out of steel. On the
Fort Apache Reservation, skateboarders in Whiteriver built a park out of plywood.
For the first time, tribes are
sponsoring skating contests in addition to basketball, football and all-Indian rodeo. There's a new Web site, rezriders.org
gathering at least 1,000 new hits each month.
The skating trend took a bit longer to hit the reservations, but
Native youths are no different than other youngsters who have been captivated by professional skateboarder Tony Hawk and his
Boom Boom HuckJam tour that features the world's best boarders. There also are videogames, clothes and music that identify
with skater culture.
Native youths' biggest obstacle to embracing the sport has been access. Distances between
communities on reservations are great, says Jeff Holtsoi, Navajo Nation Department of Youth. Typically, the nearest skate
park is at least an hour drive or more away.
Last summer, Holtsoi's Youth Department hosted the first Navajo
Nation Skateboard Competition in Window Rock during the Fourth of July.
With the contest, Holtsoi hoped to break
down the negative perception of skaters in a place where most parents have grown up playing basketball or competing in rodeo
events.
"They're good young people. You just have to get to know them to understand what they're
thinking," he said.
The competition was so successful that the portable skate ramp rented for the event was
reused during the Labor Day weekend Navajo Nation Fair, which is dominated by the All-Indian Rodeo. Both contests had nearly
100 skaters ages 6 to 25. Now, that same ramp is shared from Window Rock to Shiprock, N.M.
In San Carlos, the
tribe finished its first skate park in September. Next month, tribal leaders will gather as a medicine man blesses the space
to show their community that this is a place where they want good things to happen. Now, they're thinking of building
a larger one.
Carlos Gomez, director of the tribe's health and human services, said he knew there was a need
when he spotted youths trying stunts on rooftops and wheelchair ramps.
Although basketball is deeply ingrained
with the San Carlos Apaches, as well as other tribes, officials acknowledge it's not for everyone.
With no
bowling alley, no movie theater, only a couple of gyms, Gomez pondered the options he could help bring to the tribe's
7,000 young people.
In many ways, Gomez said, by continually challenging one's skill with new stunts, the skater's
experience parallels a young adolescent growing up traditionally in a tribe.
"It's how you become a warrior,"
he said. "If you look at skating, all of it is a lot like a tribe: It's a family. They wear regalia. They wear very
specific clothes so they can identify each other. There's even specific music. People know the skateboarders by their
music; each tribe has their song and their ceremonies."
On the Gila River Reservation south of Phoenix, Reuben
Ringlero and Irwin Lewis Jr., both 21, also are serious skaters. Along with Miles, they formed the Apache Skateboards team,
a traveling group that gives skateboarding demonstrations on and off the reservation. The group is sponsored by Miles'
father, Douglas Miles Sr., who started the Apache Skateboards company.
"My whole family plays basketball.
Skateboarding's different," Lewis said. "I think of it as art; how to flip it; what should I do on this rail?
"I want to keep skateboarding until I can't walk anymore.
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