Original Diné Painting “Telling of Great Deeds” [SOLD]

An individual Diné person does not release his name to non-Diné. They are never to be called by their name. The name or names by which we know a Diné are those assigned by either the government or a school official. Jimmie Toddy is a name bestowed on him at school. His father was known by the last name of Toddy, so that is where that name derived. He received the nickname Bea Etin Yazz at the trading post where he hung out as a young boy. It translates to Little No Shirt. An adult artist, who also hung out at the trading post at that time, always ran around without a shirt and was called "No Shirt." Toddy liked to walk around without a shirt because of the young man doing so and thereby earned the name Little No Shirt.

This painting of an elder Diné with young boys gathered around him is telling them about great deeds of the past. It was in this way that lore and legend were passed from one generation to the next as there was no written Diné language until after World War II. It was for this reason that the Marines were able to use Diné recruits for passing encrypted instructions during the war. Beatien Yazz was one of the Navajo Code Talkers of that time.

The painting was entered in the 1984 Gallup Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial where it was awarded a 2^nd place red ribbon in its category, where one of the judges was Woody Crumbo. It has been in the same collection since that date.