Interview with Shaun Beyale (Diné)

To accompany his piece, “Diné Wonder Woman” (2021), in the Red Coral Stories digital exhibition, I spoke to Shaun Beyale on January 25th, 2024. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. Please see the exhibition on the Homepage for more about the featured artwork!

Tell me a bit about Diné Wonder Woman?

That’s one of my more popular pieces. I drew it a few years back. I drew it with pen and ink, just a sketch. It was an idea I really liked and finally I did a black and white drawing of it. People really responded to it. I did a scan of it and did digital colors. I sell art prints of it.

That was inspired by two things I loved: My culture and also comic books. I grew up on comic books. Those were two things that I wanted to put together. As a kid, growing up with a lot of strong women around me, that was one of the things that to me, they seemed like superheroes. They were taking care of the household, taking care of the kids. My grandma had to take care of livestock, she had to herd sheep. My mom was an artist too, she does beadwork, used to go selling, that’s how she would help support us. Seeing them around. And looking at comic books and strong women in comic books. So I liked Wonder Woman. And in X-Men I liked Storm, she was another strong character that I really liked. For me, I wanted to show my appreciation for that through art. I wanted to showcase that through an art piece. I think the most popular and strongest woman character in comics is Wonder Woman. A lot of people, even if they don’t read comics, they know who Wonder Woman is. She is a symbol. I wanted to use her, because in our culture, Diné culture, we’re more of a matrilineal society so a lot of women in our society have a lot of power. They’re usually taking care of the households and they’re usually the owners of the livestock. So seeing them having that power and taking that responsibility and help raise us, instill in us values like: we appreciate our culture and also appreciate who we are and also got to work hard to get what you want. For me, the thing I like about superheroes, it was about good and bad—they were like moral tales. Good superheroes tend to tell in a story, in a positive way, you could learn from it—and that reminded me of some of our cultural stories. We were taught cultural stories, some of those, there was a teaching in it, it was more than just entertainment, it was to teach you how to live life. I still want to hang onto that, but at the same time, I grew up on comic books. So I wanted to use that visual medium to still hold onto my art and hold onto my culture, but also look to the future. I do live in two worlds: I live in a modern world and also live in my old culture still and look at that and appreciate that and that’s a part of me.

Doing an art piece like this reflects that. Especially her, wearing a traditional Navajo outfit. Navajos wear pearls, we do wear turquoise and we’re known for our silversmithing. I like to think outsiders can recognize that about Navajo people, even if they don’t know Navajo people, they know the Southwest Indians. We wear a lot of jewelry and silver. It’s a little different than the Plains tribes and I wanted to show that aspect, so having those visuals on Wonder Woman can identify her as a Diné, a Navajo person. And she’s wearing a princess Navajo crown, Navajo Nation, we do crown a princess every year. Not everyone makes it, nowadays you have to be a super woman to win that because you have to know culture. In our culture, we do butcher sheep so you have to know how to do that. Nowadays, it’s rare to find people who know all that. Especially younger people. To carry that on and become leaders in the community, it resonates with the youth to see them do something with the culture that’s good and positive. We do have television, Hollywood, we have all that surrounding us, but it’s good to see youth still interested in their culture. It’s becoming easier, there’s now an understanding that you can live in the modern world and like modern stuff, but when I was growing up, it was hard to find that balance between those two worlds. It’s good to see now, especially with technology, that’s why I like to play with my art, mix it with traditional, hand drawn, ink art with digital. That’s what the youth are interested in. Now I see a lot of kids drawing on their sketch book, but it’s not a sketch book, it’s a tablet. My daughter, she draws on her tablet, that’s her sketchbook. She’s inspired by me, so she draws Indigenous characters. She makes it up herself, she has a bunch of original characters. They’re Indigenous, but they’re also inspired by anime. So a lot of her stuff is anime, Japanese cartoons. For her, it’s not weird to mix it up and express herself. When I was younger, it was weird mixing comic books. No one knew about Japanese cartoons, anime.

Once I got to college, in the early 2000s, art schools still weren’t open to comic book art. It was still “low brow.” They weren’t open to graffiti art. By the time I graduated, I could see there was a little movement. It was more open to comic books, graffiti art. Now their having art gallery shows with street art, comic art. They’re in art galleries, fine art museums. It’s good to see that and the last five years, I’ve been doing my art, I’ve seen an influx of younger students doing skateboard art, comic book art, anime art, mixing music with it, some of them using technology to make three d holograms that you can see on your computer. Those things are nice, because they see the possibilities. It’s open to them now. That’s why I wanted to show Wonder Woman in my image. I think she represents the modern times, the modern woman, but at the same time, I wanted to show her with the traditional Navajo attire. I wanted to show that as a people we still hold onto our culture and we still appreciate that stuff. It’s good to see people appreciate that art. Especially going to comic cons. It’s not traditional Native American art like they would see in magazines, but it is Native American, it’s contemporary art now. You see a lot of youths doing stickers, that’s cool seeing a lot of them doing sticker art. I’ve worked with Danielle Boyer, she works for STEAM Connection (that’s Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) and she 3-D prints robots. She uses that to revitalize and hold onto traditional languages. To see that is awesome. I believe in empowerment through art. Art can be anything. For me, it’s comic books. For you, it could be writing. It could be filmmaking, it could be music. I tell people, whatever’s your passion. Your skateboard, you could do video games. When I was young, that didn’t seem possible. But now, I got to create a video game character, a Navajo video game character. A character in a Marvel game.

Can you tell us a little bit more about your original characters?

I do have a character called Ayla the Monster Slayer. She’s a Diné superhero. I’ve had variations since I was in junior high. She was inspired by comic books, Wonder Woman, X-Men’s Storm, but also at that time, I saw for the first time an original comic by an Indigenous person—it was Tribal Force. I saw it in a comic book magazine. This was Native people making their own Native comics, and it was actually set in the area where I grew up. He had his own characters, and there was a comic shop in my hometown and it used to enter monthly comic art there, and one month was to create your own superheroes, so I was inspired by Tribal Force. I created my own superhero team, of all Natives, they looked kind of like the X-Men, I had a big guy on there. I had Ayla, but back then she was named Spirit. I had some other characters. They were all archetypes of other characters. Ever since then, I was like, I could create my own stuff—but Ayla the Monster Slayer was the one I kept the longest and the one that grew from the idea into now. I do have a story for it and am trying to work on a comic for it, and eventually, I would like to put that out. I like to use her for empowerment. I like to make her look strong, confident, and that’s the kind of art that I like, so putting that kind of art together helps me feel good about myself, but also, people see it, and it helps them empower themselves. Rather than seeing something more stereotypical, negative, or sad. I grew up with superheroes and seeing that kind of stuff makes me feel more powerful. When I was just a rez kid growing up on the reservation, I didn’t have electricity or running water, so I think that’s why I could gravitate toward comic books, because you could take it anywhere, and it was like escapism. But also as I grew older, it motivated me to think more positively, especially superhero comics. It was always good versus evil and it was always about the superheroes trying to do the right thing. And that’s the thing I liked about art: you could make it whatever you want. When I went to art school, it helped me think more critically about what I wanted to do with the art. That helped me focus on what I wanted to say with Ayla the Monster Slayer or other characters.

That’s why I try to create characters that are more contemporary or a little more modern, not so much the stereotypical thing that most people think with mainstream comic book characters. That’s why I make them look more contemporary, but also have hints of what culture they’re from. Most of my characters, they are Navajo, but I’ve worked with other Indigenous people. Those are more collaborations, when I do create those characters, I have to study and look up the culture, that way things are culturally appropriate, because I want to pay respect to the culture I’m trying to draw, not to just make a generic pan-Indian character. As Native people, we can recognize that. It feels inauthentic when it’s a pan-Indian thing, because as Natives, we’re all Native Americans, but we recognize that we’re each distinct cultures. That’s why, when I make characters, I don’t try to make them generic or appeal to all the masses. I think it’s more authentic when you make them more specific to what culture that they’re supposed to be, and then you can say more with them. That’s why we see representation on mainstream media, we like it, but at the same time, we can tell if it’s inauthentic. Especially nowadays, we have more Indigenous representation, but they’re being made by Indigenous people, so now it feels more authentic, it feels more real. That’s why we can love stuff that maybe outsiders may not understand—“why did they like this one, but they didn’t like this other thing?” But as Indigenous people, we can recognize when it feels authentic, and that’s why we can appreciate certain things.

That’s why I want to create characters that are who I know and what I can represent, but also I try to use them as symbols and metaphors. You can look at my art as an art piece, you can see it simply as a superhero comic piece, or you can look at it more and there are reasons that I draw them in the poses they are or there are reasons that I may draw them in the landscapes they are or there are reasons I draw some of them with chains. Ayla the Monster Slayer carries around a chain, because a lot of the times, chains represent binding, imprisonment, especially being from our culture, we did deal with being slaves, so I wanted her to have power over her chain. Rather than the chain binding her, she’s got power over her chain, so she uses that as her weapon, like how Wonder Woman has her lasso. I wanted to use that as a representation, too. Like, you have the power to change things in your life. Especially for me and my family, dealing with alcoholism and suicide. In my family, that’s a big problem, but I chose to break that cycle and quit drinking, so it’s been 17 years since I quit drinking. That’s one step for me to encourage people that I grew up with, especially younger people, my nieces and nephews, my younger cousins. It’s good for them to see that there are people out there that don’t drink, that don’t do stuff, and that don’t get caught up in the negative aspects of life. That’s why I talk to them, yeah, things are hard, but if you work hard at things, you can get good things in life. That’s why I tell them, find something you’re passionate about, maybe art, even work. Some people get really passionate about work, so if you find something in life, you can chase it. Drinking for us, it’s not very good and usually leads down a negative path. I have a 12 year old daughter, she didn’t grow up around that. She can recognize that negative stuff in movies, she’s like, “Why do people act like that?” And I explain to her, I tell her why, me and her mom don’t drink. Younger nephews cousins recognize that—“You’re the only uncle that don’t drink.” Good! They see stuff like that and they also go, “Oh, you’re doing comic books, you’re doing art.” See, you can do stuff like this? I just want to be that spark for people. Hopefully, they can take that and run with it, and hopefully, the younger generation leads a better path than I did when I was younger. I can see that in my daughter.

What has your journey looked like in developing your art around comic book styles?

That’s the power of creating your own art. Spider Man says, “with great power comes great responsibility,” so for me, my power is art and I want to share that with people. I think that’s my responsibility, to share that with people. Even if it’s just comic books, the thing I like about comics is, yeah, it’s commercial art, even though I went to school for a fine art background, I’ve always liked commercial art, like advertising, illustration, because it’s such a mass audience, especially for me as an artist, I get to pick and choose who I want to work for and by using that platform, I can influence the art to say something. I’ve been fortunate enough, especially with Marvel, working with them on some of creating Indigenous-made comic books, they’re willing to listen to me. When I was a culture consultant on a video game character, the company didn’t have to listen to me, but I chose to speak up and tell them what was good about the character and what wasn’t good. There are certain things as Navajos we don’t do compared to other tribes, and I’m glad they were willing to listen to me and I think we made a better character like that. It was teamwork. We got to make a good character called Spider Weaver, which reminds me of Ayla the Monster Slayer. One day I would like to make a video game like that. I think it just takes collaboration. Comic books are commercial art, but if you know how to use it, you can use it for a positive thing. That’s what I’m trying to do: positive representation in comic books that’s authentic, but also something I’m proud of, but also something that makes people proud to be Indigenous. But also non-Indigenous people can appreciate it and know that it was an authentic piece of art that was created by an Indigenous person, that’s more of a realistic interpretation of Indigenous people rather than a fantasy told in a Hollywood story, told by a non-Indigenous person.

I’ve done more than just comic books. I’ve done illustrations for textbooks. I’ve been doing stuff with Scholastic. They let me work on a short story about Navajo Code Talkers. Navajo Code Talkers are part of my culture, it’s part of American culture, it’s part of the history. But not everyone knows about the Navajo Code Talkers. They may know about Code Talkers, but not the specifics. So it was nice to show in one of their high school magazines. It was a short comic that I got to work on. That was my contributing to my culture’s history, sharing it outside of my community, education. That’s why I like doing some education. Communities have reached out to me, and I’ve talked to schools, and there was doing stuff with STEAM Connection for education use. I could still do comic books and do superheroes, like with the Marvel game, that was something I never thought--they reached out to me and that was fun, because it’s nice to go online and you can see a Navajo character on a video game. When I was little, I didn’t have electricity. I tell my daughter, because she has video game consoles, we just had a simple Nintendo when I was little, now to see them doing these 3D things and now you can pretty much create your own stuff and it’s just going to get easier. Hopefully, in the future, Indigenous people, and other people, can start making their own video games with their own voices rather than going through a big corporation. That’s the thing I like about comic books, anyone can make it too, all you need is an idea and pencil and paper. You can draw your comic book. That’s the power of art.