The reservation rests in the mountains of southeastern Arizona, some 90 miles from Phoenix. With a median household income of $13,412, and 58.8 percent of the people living below the poverty line, it is one of the poorest communities in the country. But none of that matters today. “Skateboarding and frybread—what else do you need?” asks Miles.
Apache Skateboards began with a board Miles made for his son. Miles, an artist known for his powerful depictions of modern Natives, painted an Apache warrior on his son’s deck. When Doug Jr. returned home from skating that day, he told his dad, “Everyone wants one.” Miles saved up money from sales of his art, and then contacted ABC Board Supply in Costa Mesa, Calif. The result was 100 silkscreened boards. “I remember telling the boys as we started, ‘It will be 10 years before [the industry] even thinks of messing with us. So let’s start our own team, we’ll do it ourselves.’”
Miles and the team travel to other reservations as much as possible to put on demonstrations. “There’s nothing like a road trip with the crew, traveling to different Indian communities, working with kids who skate or want to,” Miles says. “It’s like that feel-good movie of the year.”
The Apache team consists of eight members, and is almost exclusively funded by the sales of Miles’ art and skateboards. “It sure ain’t easy,” Miles says. “No comfy hotels or per diems for the Apache team. No screaming girls or air-conditioned vans. No sponsorship checks or boxes of product. Just a heavy crew who skate for fun and a few T-shirts and stickers to give away—if we were lucky that month.”
When asked about the challenges facing Native youth, one of the skaters on the team answers, “There are no role models.” Miles is changing that. Razelle, one of the two girls on the team, says, “I look up to the man behind this all—Doug Miles. He has faith in me and every single other member of the team that we have all the potential in the world to make something of ourselves.”
For Miles, that is the point of Apache Skateboards. “All I want them to do is see,” he says. “I want them to see that they can do this: They can skate, design, paint, create and carve out their own place in the world with sheer tenacity and raw talent.”—Zio/Against the Grain
