Just below the Painted Desert in eastern Arizona, a tin smoke shop marks the entrance to the Fort Apache Reservation. With a right turn at a casino, Highway 73 begins an 18-mile plunge into the heart of the Apaches' tribal land.
The road spills into a hangdog town where nearly every home, whether peeling, leaning or standing up straight against the backdrop of red-rock mountains, has a basketball goal attached to a chimney, carport or utility pole. Atop each roof, satellite dishes the size of hubcaps let members of this isolated community tap into their passion for the game. On a mountainside overlooking a sawmill, teenagers position their parents' cars around a neighborhood hoop, turn on the headlights and hoist shots well into the night.
Similar scenes unfold on reservations across the country, but athletic skills developed on American Indian land are often contained within its boundaries. Although there is athletic talent on the reservations, a fact underscored by the many state basketball championships and cross-country titles American Indian high school teams have won, few players have had the opportunity to break through in major college and professional sports.
American Indians have won less recognition in athletics than most other ethnic or racial groups in the United States. They have not found their niche among the millionaires of sport or produced role models for children whose self-esteem can become threadbare.Continue reading the main story
The difficulties American Indians have encountered in trying to reach the elite levels of sport reflect some of the larger social forces that have hampered their achievement in other realms of American life. These range from the prejudice of some outsiders to what many American Indians say is an ambivalence within their communal culture toward individuals who seek to stand out.
Only 310 American Indians were among the 70,856 college athletes in Division I who received athletic aid in the 1998-99 school year, the most recent data compiled by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. While American Indians make up about 1 percent of the country's population, according to the 2000 Census, they account for only four-tenths of a percent of the scholarship athletes at the major college level.
Beyond Jim Thorpe's achievements nearly a century ago in football, baseball and the decathlon, Billy Mills's heroics in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Olympics and the recent arrival of Notah Begay III on the pro golf tour, Native American athletes have not made the leap to the highest level of American sport.
''I keep waiting,'' said Bob Harrison, a member of the 1951-52 Minneapolis Lakers championship team, one of only six Native Americans known to have played in the National Basketball Association. ''It's confusing in a way because there was Jim Thorpe, so there must be other great athletes out there. I just don't think Native Americans get the same opportunity.''
Major college coaches often view the talent on the reservations as a risky investment. Some coaches believe American Indian teenagers cannot resist alcohol or adjust to life outside the reservation. They fear American Indians will ditch their scholarships once they get homesick.
Some coaches resort to stereotypes when talking anonymously about American Indian athletes. Others are more open.
''It seems like the reservation is their comfort zone more than it would be for an inner-city kid,'' said Mick Durham, who has recruited on the reservations as the head basketball coach at Montana State. ''To me, I just think they get the government checks, and they stay. I don't know. I guess it's the way they're raised.''
This image of American Indians is distressing to the handful of players who have risen above the stigma to succeed outside the reservation, but they also concede that their culture has been an accomplice in concealing their peers, and sometimes even in undermining them.
In many tribes, humility is celebrated and individuality is suppressed. Community members have sometimes tried to sabotage their own star players. Leading scorers have been threatened, and top players have been falsely accused of violating team rules.
And when the spirituality that ribbons through the culture is combined with jealousy, some athletes have feared the powers of disreputable medicine men, worried that witchery is being used against them on the court.
''This shouldn't have anything to do with the game, but it's like spiritual warfare,'' said Rick Sanchez, a high school teacher and assistant basketball coach at Alchesay High School in Whiteriver, who grew up on the Apache reservation. ''It's sad. Instead of helping someone get out and make a name for themselves, we just pull them back in. It's like crabs in a bucket. They're trying to crawl out, but the one right behind it is pulling it down.''
The Invisible Men
Any exit strategy is complicated by the negative perceptions of American Indians among major college coaches who control Division I exposure, and, ultimately, the talent display cases for athletes seeking a pro career. The coaches compete with one another for talent all over the country, but American Indian athletes remain invisible to many. Fran Fraschilla has coached at the University of New Mexico for two years, but he has not visited any of the more than half-dozen reservations within an hour's drive of Albuquerque.
''I've been all over the state, and that's one thing I haven't done,'' Fraschilla said. ''I'm looking forward to it.''
He would be a welcome sight for high school coaches on reservations who say they rarely, if ever, get a phone call from a Division I coach, much less a visit.
Several coaches who head major college programs in states where reservations dominate the landscape explained their reluctance to explore talent there by pointing to the history of American Indian players who have been awarded scholarships but failed to fulfill them. The coaches said they had also been warned over the years about the possibility of alcohol-related disciplinary problems and absences because of tribal ceremonies.
Instead of making the journey to a reservation, coaches routinely scour American cities, or even look overseas, to fill their scholarship slots with talent.
''There's no question on the inner-city kid,'' said Durham, the Montana State coach. ''With the inner-city kid, you hear it all the time, 'I want to get out of here.' You don't hear a Native American kid ever say that.''
As the coach of a Division I school that does not ordinarily compete among the elite teams, Durham has to look for talent in the cities and in his backyard. Over the years, his visits to American Indian communities have left him with some unsettling conclusions.
''Have you ever been on a reservation?'' Durham said. ''There's hardly any green grass. They park right in front of their front door. That's always amazed me. There's no self-pride in having a nice house and taking care of it. They don't care if they have five cars broken down, sitting in the yard.''
Laura Merritt, who has three American Indians on her women's basketball team at tiny Huron University in Huron, S.D., said it was hard to blame Division I coaches for failing to take a chance on an American Indian athlete; the coaches' jobs depend on their won-lost records.
''Unfortunately, for the bigger schools, they see it as too much work,'' she said. ''They think, 'O.K., this Native American kid may be really good, but how much trouble is he or she going to give me?' They don't feel comfortable with the culture. They feel more comfortable with an inner-city player than one off a reservation.''
The Exception to the Rule
Kyle Goklish was a five-sport star at Alchesay High School on the Apache reservation. As an 8-year-old, he received a running start on a stellar sports career when his parents, in an effort to take the edge off his energy, drove their truck up a mountain road behind their wood-frame house and dropped off him and his little brother. His parents drove half a mile up the incline and watched as their sons churned dust to catch up. ''They were trying to tire us out,'' Goklish said, ''and it worked.''
Soon, Goklish was pouring his kinetic drive into high school sports. He played quarterback and point guard, and set state records as a distance runner at the Class AAA level, for midsize schools. He picked up the trombone, all while maintaining an A average in school. But he was not courted seriously by any major college when he graduated in 1999.
''If I'd been from a different school, in a different place, it wouldn't have been that way,'' Goklish said. ''When you're from a reservation, you're being judged before anyone meets you. The recruiters see us from a Hollywood stereotype of the drunken Indian. They think we're lazy, not worth the scholarship.''
For the past two years, Goklish attended Central Arizona College, a junior college near Casa Grande. He had a 3.7 grade point average, and he placed second in the junior college national cross-country championships last fall.
Finally, Goklish had accomplished enough to prove himself. In April, six Division I universities offered him full scholarships. He signed a letter of intent to run track for the University of Arizona.
Small-college coaches who field teams with American Indians say they have grown to understand the differences in culture and have learned to cope with the problems of their Indian athletes.
Rusty Gillette is the men's basketball coach at the United Tribes Educational and Technical School, a 250-student junior college in Bismarck, N.D., and he has dealt successfully with the social problems common on the reservations. He has watched a player struggle after a family member committed suicide. He has been receptive when a player requests time to attend a tribal ceremony. ''There's room to be the coach and have rules,'' Gillette said. ''But there's room to be supportive, too.''
Many American Indian athletes say they are not asking for special treatment, merely some understanding.
''I think coaches might find out that the reservations contain some extraordinary athletes,'' said State Representative Ron Volesky of South Dakota, a Lakota who graduated from Harvard. ''I think, to a degree, it takes a special coach to bring them along, give them the security they need.''
The stereotypes can be stifling. Russell Archambault, a member of the 1997 Final Four team from the University of Minnesota, remembers the image some coaches had of his heritage.
''I didn't even go to high school on the rez,'' Archambault said, ''but when I was at Minnesota on a recruiting visit, one of the coaches said to one of my best friends, 'Don't take him out to too many places, because you know how Indians are, they like to drink.' ''
On the Navajo reservation in northeast Arizona, the boys' and girls' basketball teams from Tuba City have won the Class AAA state championship two years in a row. But the Tuba City boys' coach, Charles Gover, has not been contacted by a Division I or a Division II coach.
''We have a Division I program not far away,'' Gover said, referring to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, ''and we don't hear from them.''
Gover, a Pawnee who is one of the few Native American coaches on any level, says few outsiders understand the steeplechase players have to overcome to succeed. When many Native American players go home in the afternoon, they are faced with chores: hauling water to their houses, herding sheep to help support households and taking care of elderly relatives.
''How many inner-city kids go through what these kids do?'' Gover asked. ''These kids endure so much. But they play hard, play unselfish and have talent no one ever sees.
''The major programs would rather take a chance on an inner-city kid who may have committed a felony than a Native American kid who may want to go home on the weekend.''
Courage to Leave Cocoon
Native Americans say it takes courage for an athlete to leave the reservation. There is a sense of security inside tribal borders, where an invisible fence of sorts seals off a host of fears: bigotry, loneliness and condemnation by some tribe members who shun those who venture into the white man's world.
For four decades, Sanchez, the assistant coach at Alchesay, has watched talent wither -- and even die -- inside the Apache boundaries. As a teenager, Sanchez was on almost every athletic team that Alchesay offered, but a 25-year-old team photo is particularly disturbing to him.
Eleven seniors from his football team are pictured -- 70's hairdos and all -- but only five are still alive.
He said most of them died from alcohol-related diseases and one committed suicide. One night, after a party, that player got into a fight with his girlfriend. Apparently out of despair, he stopped his car, waited for a moment, then deliberately walked in front of a speeding car.
''That boy, he could have played Division I, could have done anything he wanted,'' Sanchez said. ''But he never did, never left the reservation.''
Sanchez is not an Apache by birth, but he moved to the reservation at age 3 with his family and married an Apache after he turned 17. It took him eight years to get his degree from Arizona State; filled with a forlorn sensation familiar to Native Americans, he kept leaving the reservation only to come back, over and over.
He missed the land, the pickup games, and especially the daily lunches with a dozen friends and family members. Whether the meal consisted of bologna sandwiches or corned beef mixed with green chilies, there was nothing better than the camaraderie he felt around the dinner table.
''You're around people who understand you,'' Sanchez said. ''It's more difficult for Native Americans because they have been taken advantage of at every turn. They're very wary of the outside.''
So wary that some athletes undermine their chances of leaving. Sanchez said some former players with good grades had intentionally botched their college admission tests, hoping to foil their already slim opportunity for an athletic scholarship. Others seize the moment temporarily. They take scholarship offers from a junior college or a Division II university but do not fulfill them.
Daniel Parker, 50, works for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, stocking ponds and lakes in Arizona. He is also a basketball legend.
A skittering guard with magic in his fingertips and a 25-foot shooting range, Parker once scored 51 points in a high school game -- and that was before the advent of the 3-pointer.
His point total remains the Alchesay High School record three decades later. Wanting to ease into his career, he chose to attend Eastern Arizona, a junior college in Thatcher, ready for the basketball dream sequence to begin: junior college, major college, pros.
Although he was only 90 minutes away from the Apache reservation, Parker lasted just three months. Without telling the coach or ever playing in a game, he left school to return home to his 14 brothers and sisters.
''There's just something about the reservation that's hard to explain,'' said Parker, who, while in his 40's, averaged 40 points a night in a local men's league. ''At first, I thought I could do it. But I just didn't have the confidence that I could do well in class.''
For the first time, Parker was surrounded by classmates of all races, and he wondered whether he could keep up. The classroom eventually became too intimidating, he said.
''I guess I wanted to leave before the school made me leave,'' Parker said. ''Now, I realize I shouldn't have felt that way. Over the years I've asked myself, why did I go back home? Sometimes I think about what might have been.''
The Backlash Back Home
Basketball players like Vegas Davis at the University of Tennessee, Jarvis Mullahon at Texas-El Paso and Lawrence and Lamoni Yazzie at the Air Force Academy have successfully tested the waters on the outside in recent years. But some of them have faced a backlash upon their return home.
While many tribe members are proud of what the humble Goklish has accomplished as a runner and as a student, and while he often talks to children about aspiring to greatness without losing one's Apache core, he has been exposed to the jealousy that accompanies stardom on the reservation.
''It's hard when I go home for summer break,'' Goklish said. ''They look at you differently, talk to you differently. They think, 'Oh, you're better than us.'
''Just because I go to school and I've gotten an education, they call me white boy. They say, 'You're not really an Apache.' That's what hurts the most.''
Envy is an underlying factor in the extreme ambivalence American Indians feel regarding winning and athletic stardom on the reservation.
The same basketball stars who are treated to free pizza slices at local restaurants are also vulnerable to becoming the targets of jealousy. Players say they have been at dances, innocently hanging out with friends, only to have a community member attempt to turn them in for drinking or smoking pot in an effort to have them kicked off a team.
One player received a death threat after he made the high school varsity. Raul Mendoza, the basketball coach at Alchesay High School for the past six years, noticed something was wrong when the player, a star of the summer league, was afraid to shoot the ball once the high school season began. Eventually, the player told him the reason for his stage fright.
''Someone said: 'Hey, you think you're bad because you're on the varsity. If you stay that way, I'm going to mess you up,' '' Mendoza said. ''Then, on a second time, this person actually showed the kid a gun. He said, 'If you keep playing, I'm going to use it.' ''
Some players are also afraid that some community members have the supernatural ability to harm them on the court if they threaten to succeed.
On the reservation, religion is intertwined with daily life and celebrated with many rituals. With so much emphasis on religion, basketball is a spiritual event. In the hours before a game, athletes sprinkle corn pollen on their bodies as an offering. It is not unusual for parents to visit a medicine man to request blessings of safety for their child.
Not all prayers have the purest intentions, though. Players and coaches describe how athletes have fallen ill without warning on the court, how some players and spectators have seen shadowy figures materialize in front of the basket during a big game, how the threat of harm has left players unraveled.
On game night, the pressure on players can be suffocating. Crowds of 3,000-plus pour into the bleachers at high schools. Lines begin forming two hours before tip-off.
Teams have gone so far as to enlist the help of security personnel -- spiritual bodyguards, of sorts. From the moment a player arrives at a game, he is ushered through the parking lot and into the gym. Every precaution is taken to assure that no one touches the player; that might make him vulnerable to a malicious spell cast through touch or breath.
''You wouldn't let anyone close enough to breathe on you or touch you,'' said Lt. Lawrence Yazzie, a Navajo who played high school basketball on the reservation. ''You wouldn't shake your opponent's hand before the tip. After the game, it was different. You shook their hands, went out into the crowd, hugged everyone.''
Between high school games, Yazzie and his brother Lamoni took another precaution. As part of their training regimen, they visited a sweat lodge four or five times a week, enduring blasts of heat and steam as part of a purification ritual.
The positive lure of the community's deep spirituality, along with the tug of family, have often brought promising athletes back to the reservation before they have given themselves enough time to see if they can succeed in the outside world.
Willard Tsingine, considered by many to have been the most talented Navajo basketball player, took his pull-up jumper, passing skills and speed to the high-profile program at Wichita State in the late 1970's. He became a starter after his first game.
But Tsingine left after a year to play with his brother Ray at unassuming Northern Arizona. The school was near home, close to the American Indian fans who crammed into the gym to see the brothers play. His chance of being recognized by pro scouts was diminished significantly.
''Back then, people were looking for big guards like Magic Johnson, but I was as good as John Stockton,'' Tsingine said. ''I think as I get older, it bothers me to think why I was overlooked. I've wondered if there was prejudice there. But I've got kids, and so maybe they'll get their chance.''Continue reading the main story