TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, Ariz.
Amid the mesquite trees with arthritic limbs and cactuses as tough as thugs, near low-slung homes that slump as if trying to go unnoticed, there is a two-story house in the works.
On the desert landscape, it will shoulder above its neighbors like the back row of a school photo. On this reservation, it will symbolize an all-American vision of success in a tribal culture that values modesty over materialism and humility over Hummers.
"I wouldn't build the house," said Leonisa Lewis, a young member of the Tohono O'odham tribe. "You can't live better than anyone else. You could, but it's not right to make others feel sad because they don't have what you have."
En route to the mud house her grandfather built, Leonisa is staring out a car window, alternately explaining why she had to leave the "rez" three years ago and the reasons it still seduces her.
What's to resist? The social ills or the threadbare infrastructure; the isolation or the poverty?
It is difficult for outsiders to understand. After all, Leonisa is a bright teenager, with the smile of a casting agent's dream and enough raw talent to play for the Desert View High School tennis team in south Tucson. After all, Leonisa is a freshman with good grades, graced with Gene Kelly's footwork and a forehand that has developed after only two months holding a racket.
She is a pure beginner, free-swinging, no expectations. Progress can be unnerving, though. Until the day she graduates — and beyond — Leonisa will most likely struggle with her potential to succeed in the outside world versus an innate eagerness to stand out from the tribe.
"There's a lot of guilt on those who leave the rez," Leonisa's mother, Angie Francisco, said. "The family is always telling them: `Come back and work for the tribe. Hold on to who you are.' "
It is the fear of moral homogenization. Leonisa is from an Indian value system upside down from the one that dominates American society. But if the grip of humility can be self-defeating for American Indians, the pursuit of stardom can be self-destructive for us.
American Indians may dread losing their identity in the white man's world, but here is a counterproposal: Instead of us rubbing off on you, what if you could rub off on us?
Come on out, the water is fine. We could use your humble perspective right now in a fame-crazed culture that is dying to find out, "Are You Hot?"
"Maybe I'd like to be famous for doing something good, but not for making movies," she said. "I don't care about money, but I remember when I was really young, wanting a million dollars so I could do things for my grandparents. I wouldn't buy them a house. My grandfather built the house by himself, out of mud. Everything you see, he made."
Off Highway 86, past the dusty reservation hub of Sells, Ariz., Charles Lewis stands on a dirt yard that has been raked in lines as perfect and straight as pinstripes.
Outside the four-room house where Leonisa spent her early childhood, he is tending a pot of potent chili on a concrete fire pit that he constructed, surrounded by a fence he methodically thatched. Unwittingly, he is destroying the stereotypes of Indians as lazy, without pride and unmotivated.
There are three Lewis family homes nearby, then nothing but desert, distant mountains and a sky for star gazing. "It's weird," said Leonisa, who sounded like a sage just days before her 15th birthday last week. "Sometimes, even now, I really miss it here."
This comfort zone has its hazards. Living in Tucson for years while her daughter clung to the rez, Angie Francisco may not have known Leonisa tried marijuana at age 9 — "I wanted to fit in," Leonisa said — but she knew about the all-night parties in Sells, about the suicide rates. She also knew about the taunts her daughter endured for having light skin.
"The girls in the village next to ours called me `white girl,' " Leonisa said. "If you're not like everyone else, people turn against you."
So, she conformed by smoking pot and following a fashion statement that reflected the dark attitudes of her peers: black baggy clothes.
"I felt like I needed to get her out of there," said Angie, who works in the accounting department of the Desert Diamond Casino south of Tucson. "I told her, if you don't leave, you'll be pushing a stroller. She sees that now."
One road trip also opened her eyes at age 11. Along with two carloads of family members, she went to Palo Alto, Calif., home of Stanford University. Her cousin, Patrick, the first Lewis to go to college, spent three years there before leaving his studies when his girlfriend had twins.
The visit marked an epiphany for Leonisa. In awe of a lush landscape borrowed from a Monet, surprised to witness a powwow so far from home, she realized culture could travel to beautiful places.
"It takes leaving to understand there can be something good beyond the life you know," she said.
"She was a Navajo," Haines said. "She couldn't stick with it. I don't know where she is, what happened to her. But now, I see things changing."
This year, he has three Indian players on a girls team that has grown to 34 from 15 in one season. Of all the bleak stats he can recite about Desert View — like how only 55 percent of freshmen will graduate — his teams buck the despair. Most players in recent years have gone on to two- or four-year college programs.
His success rate defies the odds because he has defied convention. Haines's practices are an exercise in acceptance. Whether Indian or Hispanic, Haines gives them space to be themselves.
"Leonisa will do this funny Indian thing sometimes," Haines mentioned. "She'll take a break, go sit on the top level of the bleachers, look at the sky and say to no one in particular, `I love tennis.' "
She fell in love by happenstance. After watching friends play, Leonisa picked up a racket. If she polishes her game, she has a chance to be discovered by a college coach, an opportunity that hardly exists on a rez. As it was before inner-city black athletes were first recruited, college coaches don't see the ability in Indians; they see stereotypes.
"For a lot of cultures, sports are an opportunity to go outside and succeed," said Leonisa's cousin, Patrick, 23, who plans to return to Stanford after establishing a child development program on a reservation in New Mexico. "People talk about the opportunities in athletics, but it doesn't extend to us."
Together, the bias of outsiders and the self-sabotage on the rez have left an American melting pot of Yao Mings and Sammy Sosas without an Indian sports icon right now.
"It doesn't surprise me," Leonisa said. "I think a lot of Indians are scared to go away, to try. They're afraid of the jealousy and the witchcraft, too."
Want to succeed at the risk of a curse? Outsiders may dismiss it, but to some Indians, just the threat of black magic reinforces a core cultural value: humility shouldn't be forsaken for stardom.
Maybe the real magic is in the message. Maybe there can be a balance between a mud house and a two-story home, between need and gluttony. With one Leonisa at a time, perspective might infiltrate our culture of excess. As it turns out, we need her more than she needs us.
