4wheelwarpony

4wheelwarpony is a multi-screen experimental film that juxtaposes historic archive photos and modern reenactments of 19th Century White Mountain Apache Scouts. It does so with art, photography and skateboarding footage captured and created by core members of the White Mountain Apache band of skateboarders in an effort to document their culture in motion.

Skateboard culture, like Native American culture is often borrowed or stolen, then regurgitated to the public for profit in a distorted way resented by skateboarders. On the surface this film may seem to depict White American Apache youth borrowing “pop-culture” in place of their own., when it is actually ancient Apache culture of young men, manifesting itself within skateboard culture.

This 8 minute experimental film was featured in a collaborative exhibition between the National Museum of the American Indian in New York and the Heard Museum in Phoenix Arizona. 4wheelwarpony is a personal portrait of two incredibly adaptive cultures, one very ancient and one still evolving, yet both are indigenous to North America. Skateboarding and Native American Culture.

The Apaches portrayed are White Mountain Apache Scouts of the 1880’s, and they are depicted by young skateboarders from the community of Whiteriver on the White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona. The footage spans the last 15 years of skateboarding on the Reservation, and depicts a very specific group of skateboarders that have grown up in the same culture and environment. This is an effort to portray two fluid cultures in constant motion.

A project by Dustin Craig, presented to Skateboarding Film Festival 2009 in Seattle.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/1776390[/vimeo]