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  • Disruption, Continuity, and the Social Lives of ThingsNavajo Folk Art and/as Performance
  • Judith Hamera (bio)
Abstract

North American outdoor passion plays are not marginal theatrical sites; focusing critical attention on these faith-based dramas is particularly urgent in the context of the rise of religiosity in U.S. politics. The amateur evangelical shows offer troubling representations of Jews, racial exclusivity, and implicit assumptions of authenticity; yet, as community theatre endeavors, they hold forth possibilities for innovative iconography.


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Figure 1.

(facing page) This detail of Harrison Juan's playful wood carving of Bill Clinton leering at a Navajo woman (reflected in his sunglasses) exemplifies the spirited social commentary in Navajo folk art. Private collection. (Photo by Judith Hamera)

[C]ommodities, like persons, have social lives.

—Arjun Appadurai (1986)

A study of commodity culture always turns out to be an exploration of a fantastic realm in which things act, speak, rise, fall, fly, evolve...

—Thomas Richards (1991)

On a crisp February 2002 morning in Scottsdale, Arizona, crowds assembled for the first sale of Navajo folk art sponsored by the Heard Museum North. The sale coincided with Fabric, Wood and Clay: The Diverse World of Navajo Art, an exhibit of Navajo creativity in traditional and contemporary forms. In the exhibit, alongside familiar "Chiefs' Blankets" [End Page 146] and silver work, was Florence Riggs's explosion of dinosaurs, meticulously woven into a three-by-four-foot vibrantly colored rug. Brown pitch-glazed pottery was dotted with horned toad lizards or shaped into grinning fat bears, paws raised in greeting or, perhaps, in gleeful attack. Mud-toy Uncle Sams sat astride painted mud horses.

The exhibit featured the extraordinary carvings of the late Charlie Willeto, a medicine man whose violation of Navajo taboos concerning representation and wood carving earned him critical acclaim after his death at age 67,1 and perhaps, according to one of his two surviving sons, a tragic run of "bad luck" affecting his family (Rosenak 1998:56). Of Charlie's eight children with Elizabeth Willeto Ignacio, a gifted carver in her own right, only two are still alive.

One of these two sons, Robin, then 40, was at the folk art sale: an impressive figure, standing out from the crowd of turquoise-studded Anglo collectors who had gathered early to survey the work. Robin is a big man, tall and heavy. A black leather bandana tied across his forehead gave him the appearance of an outlaw biker who took a wrong turn and ended up, incongruously enough, on the meticulously landscaped grounds of El Pedregal, the gallery and upscale retail complex that houses the Heard North. This complex also serves The Boulders, a luxury resort where, in February, rooms go for over $600 per night.

Robin—an artist, like his father—arrived late to the sale and brought only a few pieces. His work is widely collected; most of these pieces were already sold when I reached his table. I was especially taken by his two-and-a-half-foot sculpture of an Indian wearing a floor-length bonnet, all carved out of cedar—his first work using cedar, he told me. Most carvers use cottonwood or pine. The figure seemed washed in browns rather than painted; the effect made it appear both faded and glowing, a quality also intrinsic to Charlie Willeto's work. The piece was sold, but I was still compelled by it. "What do you call him?" I asked. Robin was gazing down. I had to really look to see his quick half-smile. "Chief Dan George," he replied. There was laughter all around.

Chief Dan George is arguably the most famous Hollywood Indian. In the film Little Big Man he asks Dustin Hoffman's character, "Am I dead yet?" Hoffman replies, "No, grandfather." "Damn," Chief Dan George mutters. "I can never get this right" (Penn 1970). Robin Willeto's choice of an actor, and of this particular actor, to characterize his carving is illustrative. Like Chief Dan George in this scene, Robin is a trickster, actively staging both himself and his work in his encounters with traders and collectors. Even as he notes, somewhat wistfully, that he...

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