Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with cathy smith

We’re looking forward to introducing you to cathy smith. Check out our conversation below.

cathy, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. Have any recent moments made you laugh or feel proud?
Our Nambe Trading Post was just voted the #2 Best Gallery in Santa Fe by the Santa Fe Reporter Newspaper!

Last year we were voted the Best Woman Owned Business of Santa Fe by the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce!

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
We are a film family: Cathy Smith is an Oscar nominated and Emmy winning Costume Designer for major motion pictures, Jennifer Jesse Smith has been a stylist and set costumer for film, and her husband Peter Weidenfeller is a key grip.

We brought an historic Indian Trading Post on the Nambe Pueblo back to life after 80 years. Next to it, we created the Museum of Western Film & Costume, featuring costumes and props from many of the 45 films we have costumed, beginning with Dances With Wolves. Our latest film, which we just wrapped, was Dark Winds, the Tony Hillerman series.

Our trading post is known for historic Navajo weavings, pueblo pottery, historic Plains beadwork, and jewelry- boith Navajo and Zuni vintage pieces and the award winning gold and silver jewelry of Jennifer Jesse Smith.

Okay, so here’s a deep one: What relationship most shaped how you see yourself?
My relationship with my Hunka (adoptive) parents Kenneth and Darlene Young Bear: lakota and Hidatsa.
They taught me the traditional spiritual ways of the northern Plains peoples and instilled in me a respect for all life known as Mitakuye Oyasin: We are all related. I see myself as but a small part in the greater conciousness of the Universe – but with an important role to play: to interact with all beings, animate and inanimate in a sacred way.
We try to share that world view in our work, in our business, and with our friends, clients and relatives.

What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them?
To be a young woman, abandoned, with a child – I was forced to overcome the betrayal and fear of abandonement and make it in a mans world.

I have healed that wound through the love of my daughter and by following my heart, my dreams in a world that did not support them, and ultimately becoming successful.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. Whom do you admire for their character, not their power?
I most admire Tasunka Witko- Crazy Horse. He was a young man of indisputable character, who gave all for his people and their way of life.
He was generous, courageous, wise, and a loner – he tried to keep his band together and maintain their way of life in the face of manifest destiny and the onslaught of white America. In the end he died for his people.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I hope that people will remember my work, my art and that I gave all to authenticity, that I kept our Northern Plains traditions alive and shared them with the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nambetradingpost
• Instagram: The nambe trading post
• Linkedin: Cathy A. Smith
• Facebook: Cathy A. Smith and Nambe Trading Post
• Youtube: Cathy A. Smith Smoke Signals from the Tipi