PHOENIX – Years ago, skateboarding was branded as a hobby for rebels or stoners on city streets, schoolyards, and backyards. Those times are long gone.
Skateboarding, whose Hawaiian roots are tied to surfing, is no longer a fringe phenomenon. It became an Olympic sport in 2020. There are numerous amateur and professional skateboarding competitions in the United States. And on Friday, the US Postal Service is issuing stamps celebrating the sport — and what indigenous groups have contributed to skate culture.
Di’Orr Greenwood, 27, a Navajo Nation, Arizona-born and raised artist whose work features on the new stamps, says it’s come a long way since she was a kid and people only ever saw her thrown from certain locations for skating.
“Now it’s like being accepted on a global scale,” Greenwood said. “I know so many skateboarders who are very proud of it.”
The postal agency debuts the Art of the Skateboard stamps at a Phoenix skate park. The stamps feature skateboard artists from across the country including Greenwood and Crystal World, Tlingit Athabascan. William James Taylor Jr., an artist from Virginia, and Federico “MasPaz” Frum, a Columbian-born muralist in Washington, DC, complete the quartet of featured artists.
The stamps highlight the spread of skateboarding, particularly in the Indian country where demand for skate parks is growing.
The artists see the stamp as a small canvas, a functional work of art that will be seen across the US and beyond.
“I might get a letter in the mail that someone sent me with my stamp on it,” said Worl, 35, who lives in Juneau, Alaska. “I think then it will really come home with the excitement.”
USPS Art Director Antonio Alcalá led the search for artists to paint skate decks for the project. After agreeing on a final design, each Alcalá artist was given a skateboard to work on. He then photographed the maple skate decks and incorporated them into an illustration of a young person holding up a skateboard for display. The person is shown in muted colors to draw attention to the skate deck.
Alcalá took to social media to look for artists who were not only talented but also knowledgeable about skateboard culture. Worl was already on his radar with her brother Rico designing the Raven Story stamp in 2021, honoring a central figure in Indigenous stories along the Pacific Northwest coast.
The Worl siblings run an online store called the Trickster Company, featuring fashion, homeware and other goods with both indigenous and modern influences. For their skate deck, Crystal Worl pays homage to their clan and love of water with a sockeye salmon against a blue and indigo background.
She carefully chose what she wanted to emphasize.
“There are certain designs, patterns and stories that belong to certain clans and you, even as an indigenous person, have to have permission to share certain stories or designs,” Worl said.
The only times Navajo culture has been depicted on postage stamps has been on rugs or necklaces. Greenwood, who coached for the US women’s Olympic skateboard team, knew right away that she wanted to integrate her heritage in a modern way. Her nods to Navajo culture include a turquoise inlay and a depiction of eagle feathers used to bestow blessings.
“I was born and raised by my great-grandmother, who looked at a postage stamp the way a little kid would look at an iPhone 13,” Greenwood said. “She trusted every important message and document and everything to a stamp to send and trusted that it got there.”
Skateboarding has become a staple throughout Indian Country. A skate park was opened in August on the Hopi Reservation. Skateboarders on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in eastern Arizona recently received funding from The Skatepark Project, the non-profit organization owned by pro skateboarder Tony Hawk. Competitions organized by youth are held on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Dustinn Craig, a White Mountain Apache filmmaker and Lifer skateboarder in Arizona, has made documentaries and short films about the sport. The 47-year-old recalls how skateboarding was considered daft and anti-establishment when he hid “a useless wooden toy” in his locker as a kid. At the same time, Craig describes skateboarding culture as “my arts and humanities education.”
As such, he is wary of the mainstream embrace and sometimes cliquey nature of today’s skateboarding world.
“For those of us who have been at this for a very long time, it’s kind of offensive because I think a lot of the popularity has come from the proliferation of access to the visual elements of youth culture skateboarding via the internet and social media,” said Craig. “Well, I feel like it really trivializes the local youth and kind of robs it of the authenticity of the older skateboarding culture that I grew up with.”
He concedes that he might come across as a “grumpy old man” to younger Indigenous skateboarders who are open to collaborating with outsiders.
The four skateboards designed by the artists will eventually be donated to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, said USPS spokesman Jonathan Castillo.
The stamps, which will have a circulation of 18 million, will be available at post offices and on the USPS website beginning Friday. It’s exciting for the artists to be part of a project that feels low-tech in the age of social media.
“It’s like the physical thing is special because you make the effort to go to the post office and buy the stamps and write something,” Worl said.
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Terry Tang is a member of The Associated Press’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ttangAP
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