DezBaa'

DezBaa' is an actor and filmmaker. A citizen of the Navajo (Diné) Nation, she was born in and is based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Born for the Tó'aheedlíinii (Water Flows Together clan), DezBaa' was raised in the culturally rich area of Española, in Northern New Mexico. She is of Basque, Spanish, and Mexican descent. She secured her first feature film role in the summer of 2016 for Scott Cooper's period Western, "Hostiles" as a heavily featured character. Her first speaking role came a few months later with Susanna White's "Woman Walks Ahead." DezBaa' has played Erica in the 2018 theater production of "The Sweetest Swing in Baseball" by Rebecca Gilman and performed alongside Wes Studi, DeLanna Studi, Kholan Studi, Robert Mesa, and Kenneth Ruthardt in a staged reading of Mary Kathryn Nagle's stage play, Sovereignty, at Santa Fe's historic Lensic theatre in 2019. Playfully, DezBaa' insists her first and most fond memory of acting was accurately portraying a cycad in a Montessori production of Dinosaur Valley in Kindergarten. She is a former Division of Natural Resources Navajo Nation employee, and holds a Bachelor's degree in geology from Amherst College. She studied filmmaking at Northern New Mexico College and holds two MFAs from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM-one for Screenwriting and one for Creative Nonfiction. Her favorite dinosaur is the ankylosaurus - "the living tank of the late Cretaceous." Also known as Sharon Anne Henderson, as an artist she goes by DezBaa'. This, according to the translation of the late Dr. Fred Begay, family friend and the first Navajo physicist, who gave her this name as a child, (aptly) means, "She's Going on a Raid."