Jolene Nenibah Yazzie: A Woman Warrior

Santa Fe--Jolene Nenibah Yazzie is best described as a woman warrior. She speaks softly in a confident way, stands five foot, five inches, and is the shortest person in her family. Using passion to drive pure talent, feeding it with disciplined self-teaching, and refining it through the desire to learn, Jolene is no stranger to graphic design and certainly no amateur.  

Currently attending the Institute of American Indian Arts as a freshman for the new Visual Communications program, Yazzie is a self-taught artist. Originally from Lupton Ariz., and a member of the Navajo Nation, Yazzie began drawing as a small child with her masterpieces scrawled on the walls of her parent's house. Today she attributes her beginnings as a real artist to her older brother who gave her a picture from Thrasher magazine.  

“One time my brother came into my room, threw me a picture and said, 'Try and draw this,'" she remembers. It was a picture of a skull holding a guitar in a graveyard by the artist Pusshead. “I said, ‘No, that’s too hard.’” Yet she eventually tried, revealing the undeniable talent she continues to nurture. Since she began drawing, Yazzie has disciplined herself in learning a new technique every year; pencils, colored pencils, shading, black and white, ink, markers, painting, spray paint, and water colors are just a few of the mediums and techniques she has taken the time to learn. 

Yazzie began expanding these techniques first at Collins College in Tempe, Ariz. in 1999, but didn't follow through with her studies. In the fall of 2002, she transferred to Diné College in Tsaile, Ariz., and then transferred to IAIA this year. “At Collins there weren’t Native issues, or that Native art involvement. It was just kind of lacking in culture,” states Yazzie. "And at Diné College they didn’t have very many art classes.” 

Today at IAIA, it is obvious that Yazzie has a good grasp of design principles, and might even appear to be unchallenged by many of the basic art classes she is now enrolled in. “I feel like I’m wasting my time in a lot of respects. I’m just going to be doing all the things I learned over and over again,” says Yazzie.

 An obviously legitimate question for such a talented artist is why she is attending more school? She is still not sure. She has mastered the use of computer graphics and design principles, has dabbled in photography, which can be seen at rednations.com, and begun to develop ideas for the future.  Yazzie has many goals apart from getting through art school. She is full of ideas and shows off one of her developing projects and daily pleasures, a skateboard.  

She has designed, and painted the board, and brought it to life. With the addition of some wheels, it is ready to use. It is a black board that says “Native Edge,” and is a project she hopes to develop further in the future. “My whole philosophy on the Native Edge skateboards is about women warriors,” states Yazzie. “If women’s skating ever gets big enough, I’d like to sponsor Native girls in pro-skating.” Yazzie has a very big emphasis on women in general.

According to her, women warriors are like superheroes.  “I’ve met a lot of women who disrespect themselves. They are the receivers, they are sacred enough to have a child, while men are the givers. Just that whole process of how mother earth is a women, and then father sky--it all falls in line with that, that’s where we stand right now. And that’s the kind of message that I would like to get across in my artwork.”  Many people may interpret this message wrong or misunderstand where Yazzie is coming from. “I’m not a feminist, that’s not what I’m about,” she says. “I’m about balance. We’re all equal no matter what sex we are, no matter what race we are. That’s the kind of person that I am.” 

In line with her ideas of women warriors as superheroes and getting a message across, Yazzie also has more ideas for the future. She loves comic books, especially Spider-Man. She hopes one day to create her own Spider-Man, the Native way, among other Native-based comic books. 

“Traditionally for Navajos, when a woman is going to become a weaver, the people have a ceremony. They try to find a nice web and rub it all over your hands so that you can be a good weaver,” explains Yazzie. “That story kind of reminds me of Spider-Man.”  

Despite her dreams and accomplishments, Yazzie still measures her success and future by her brothers. “To this day, I’m trying to make them proud of me,” Yazzie says, “I’ve always admired them since I was small, and if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be who I am now.” 

Copyright 2003 © IAIA Chronicle