The story Dustinn must tell

Anyone who watched the one hour documentary "Geronimo" on the PBS American Experience series has seen the work of Apache/Navajo filmmaker Dustinn Craig. Dustinn has also done a fair amount of work with the Iñupiat here on the Arctic Slope and came up one day ahead of me to do some shooting for Iñupiaq filmmaker Rachel Edwardson. Last night, at about 8 PM, I went to visit him at the home of Rachel's parents George and Debby Edwardson. We stayed up talking until nearly 1 AM.

Do you recognize the Apache in the photo on Dustinn's computer?

Few Americans would recognize Alchesay, although just about everyone who knows even a tiny bit of the history and lore of this nation would recognize Geronimo, Chiricahua Apache. Dustinn would like people to know about his fellow White Mountain Apache, Alchesay, who, to preserve his nation, organized and led the Apache Scouts, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery and valor and became Chief of the White Mountain Apache Tribe. Whatever preconceptions or stereotypes anyone might hold about who the Apache Scouts were and why they fought, based on the western movies or the superficial telling of Native, drop them. Wait for Dustinn's movie about the Apache Scouts. He's been working on it for quite awhile now and he has a long way to go and could use a lot more financial resource, but it will be worth the wait.

It is a story he wants people to know - most importantly his own White Mountain Apache, who can go into their own cultural center at Fort Apache and find a variety of books about the Chiricahua Geronimo, but of Alchesay only a postcard.

When Dustinn was a baby, a toddler and then a very little boy, Margie and I would babysit him. He often played with Jacob. His father, the late, great, famous-throughout-Indian-Country Navajo artist, cartoonist, poet, songwriter and performer Vincent Craig, was my best friend in Arizona - as good a friend, in fact, as I ever expect to have in this life. When I brought my White Mountain Apache wife to Alaska, we came to stay for good, but we always imagined that one day about this time in our lives we would reestablish a part-time, winter, presence back on her White Mountain reservation - not a place to which her people were driven and penned in, but their true homeland since long before the coming of the Americans.

We would pick up our friendship with Vincent and his White Mountain Apache wife Mariddie right where we left off almost 33 years ago. Just as we had before, Vincent and I would wander about having fun in the great country of the White Mountain Apache, with an occasional jaunt north into the Navajo Nation or south towards San Carlos and Globe. That dream came to an end in May of 2010 when cancer took Vincent away from us. On the night of his father's death, Dustinn and I stayed up talking into the wee hours - just like we did last night.

There are tears trickling down my cheeks right now. I did not expect this. It was over three years ago. I thought my tears had all dried. 

Text added at 10:11 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 53 and counting.