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CLITSO DEDMAN, NAVAJO CARVER
His Art and His World
REBECCA M. VALETTE

鈥淩ebecca Valette鈥檚 history of the life of the early to mid-twentieth-century Din茅 trader, architect, and master wood carver Clitso Dedman is a fascinating work鈥攚ell written and beautifully illustrated. Empathetically written in consultation with descendants, it also uses an amazing array of print and archival sources, which would-be writers of poorly documented Indigenous life histories will appreciate. The book鈥檚 thorough inventory of Dedman鈥檚 carvings and their dispositions will interest students of Indigenous art marketing and collecting as well.鈥濃�擪lara Kelley, coauthor of Navajoland Trading Post Encyclopedia

Rebecca Valette鈥檚 Clitso Dedman, Navajo Carver is the first biography of artist Clitso Dedman (1876鈥�1953), one of the most important but overlooked Din茅 (Navajo) artists of his generation. Dedman was born to a traditional Navajo family in Chinle, Arizona, and herded sheep as a child. He was educated in the late 1880s and early 1890s at the Fort Defiance Indian School, then at the Teller Institute in Grand Junction, Colorado. After graduation Dedman moved to Gallup, New Mexico, where he worked in the machine shop of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway before opening his first of three Navajo trading posts in Rough Rock, Arizona. After tragedy struck his life in 1915, he moved back to Chinle and abruptly changed careers to become a blacksmith and builder.
At age sixty, suffering from arthritis, Dedman turned his creative talent to woodcarving, thus initiating a new Navajo art form. Although the neighboring Hopis had been carving Kachina dolls for generations, the Navajos traditionally avoided any permanent reproduction of their Holy People, and even of human figures. Dedman was the first to ignore this proscription, and for the rest of his life he focused on creating wooden sculptures of the various participants in the Yeibichai dance, which closed the Navajo Nightway ceremony. These secular carvings were immediately purchased and sold to tourists by regional Indian traders. Today Dedman鈥檚 distinctive and highly regarded work can be found in private collections, galleries, and museums, such as the Navajo Nation Museum at Window Rock, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and the Arizona State Museum in Tucson. Clitso Dedman, Navajo Carver, with its extensive illustrations, is the story of a remarkable and underrecognized figure of twentieth-century Navajo artistic creation and innovation.

Rebecca M. Valette is professor emerita of Romance languages at Boston College and an internationally recognized expert in language methodology, testing, and applied linguistics. She and her husband, Jean-Paul Valette, have curated several exhibitions of Navajo textiles. They are coauthors of Weaving the Dance: Navajo Yeibichai Textiles (1910鈥�1950) and Navajo Weavings with Ceremonial Themes: A Historical Overview of a Secular Art Form.

Available from Bison Books.

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