S1: Hey there , San Diego. I'm Andrew Bracken in for Jade Hyneman. On today's show , we hear about a locally owned skincare company bringing Native American representation to the beauty industry. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation with. A local indigenous owned company is making waves in the beauty industry. Native beauty is a skincare brand founded by Ruthanne Thorne , a tribal member of the Rincon Indian Reservation. It recently won a Best of Beauty award from allure , making them the first indigenous owned brand with that recognition. Ruth Ann joins me now. Ruth Ann , welcome to Midday Edition.
S2: Thank you so much for having me.
S1: Well , thanks so much for joining us. I mean , take , you know , take a moment. Can you take me to the moment you decided you wanted to start. Native beauty.
S2: I'd love to. I want to give you a little bit of a backstory. You know , I. My family has been at the Rincon Indian Reservation , which is located northeast of San Diego. And we have been there even prior to the inception of the reservation where Luiseno people or our actual traditional name is Poco , which means the people of the West. And so our land , our territory goes from La Jolla , California , all the way up past San Clemente , out to the Channel Islands and Catalina. So we've been here for a really long time. And growing up , I didn't really have any , like , people to look to within beauty or fashion , because we really have not had very much representation in mainstream culture. So fast forward to my child , who is now 19 years old. This was when she must have been about 14. We went into a local Sephora like , you know , normal teenagers like to do , and I was looking at the Asian skincare and it had Korean , Japanese. And she came over and she said , mom , where's the Native American section ? And it really struck a chord because I had never really thought about it up until that point. And it it took me back to my childhood. And recognizing that within beauty , there's never been representation. And that's how native Beauty started.
S1: Well , I appreciate all the backstory as well. Just , you know , the history there. Um , it's really pretty incredible. I mean , tell us more about getting started.
S2: So it was a lot of research and development. It started out with really going to the medicine people of our tribe. I work with a lot of the local tribes in the Pama Valley. Um , Pechanga is our neighboring tribe , and I have a really good friend and resource there who heads up cultural , and she's also a medicine woman. So she was able to give me a lot of wisdom , and I needed that really key ingredient. And it was right before my eyes. And that was acorn oil. Um , Acorn is something we've lived off of. It's been our sustenance for all California tribes. We ate it. It's a superfood. And we also extracted the oil for the healing of the skin. So that quickly became my star ingredient. And then it was just a matter of really learning how to work within labs and bring in organic , um , you know , Ingredients and a lot of that sauce from my neighbors and the tribes here.
S1: There's this term walk in beauty. I'm wondering if you can talk about what that means to you in the place beauty and beauty rituals have in indigenous communities.
S2: So walk in beauty is something that all indigenous tribes have their own version of. Um , probably the most popular walk in beauty comes from the Navajo or the Diné tribes , and it has a lot of layers to it. So walking in beauty is not just an external , um , element , although a lot of people don't realize that , you know , indigenous people have had incredibly , um , incredibly rich in our beauty practices and taking care of our physical bodies. You know , that's something that I feel like Hollywood really did us an injustice to really kind of show that either we were kind of like a little bit above the cave people and , you know , you see kind of like , oh , these are the indigenous people , you know , they're dirty and they're , you know , they're foraging for food or , you know , we're over sexualized. You know , you've got all these different versions. But Walking Beauty is really about , um , not only taking care of your physical body because it is the vehicle that takes you through this journey that we call life. So we we treat it with utmost importance , but also , um , making sure that the beauty is seen by our eyes when we reflect on our journey. So you can look at life in a lot of different ways. You can look at the negativity and the bad things that happen. But walking in beauty is really taking the moments to appreciate the life that you live. And we learn a lot of that from nature. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. You touched on this earlier. Um , for a long time , the industry has prioritized , you know , more Eurocentric beauty standards. You also just reference these sort of Hollywood stereotypes. Um , how are you working to broaden that ? You know , with , with this , this company.
S2: So I'm really about. I mean , the , the actual products themselves , I feel are really next level. I mean , we've we have lots of people who buy the products and are just really crazy about our products because they're very good. But I think what's more important is sharing the indigenous view on beauty , and also on the way that we look at at the human , at each other within a tribe. So the the colony version of beauty , I call it the pyramid scheme. So when the colonies came over , they came over with an idea of some people are more valuable than others. We see that today , so a lot of the cues that we get from beauty , from really the inception of this country , which is not that old , is that whoever is rich and whoever is famous , we look to them as being more , more valuable or more beautiful. So take the Kardashians , for instance. They're kind of they've been on the top of the heap for a long time. They're famous , they're beautiful. And so a lot of the culture revolves around what do they look like ? So they have , you know , big lips , big butts , you know. And so now we've got this whole culture of young women that are trying to emulate that through plastic surgery and through all of these different ways. And really , what we're saying is for us to be valuable , we need to look like that. And this goes back to the Victorian era when everybody wanted to look like Queen Victoria. So in the indigenous culture , we have a very different view because we have a flat , round leadership style where everybody in a tribe sits together and we look at each other as having value. So uniqueness is what's really elevated within indigenous culture. And that's what I'm trying to bring to our beauty line. And that's why our tagline is Ancestral Secrets for Authentic Beauty. And that authenticity piece is what we really want to , um , bring to the world.
S1: You know , talking about the beauty industry , I mean , it's it's a huge multibillion dollar industry. It kind of , you know , touches on all these other areas of culture that we've been talking about here , but I imagine it's also quite Competitive , you know.
S2: I mean , it has been an incredible four years. I always say we're going to probably be one of those eight year overnight successes.
S1:
S2: Well , first of all , it's a huge learning curve. And then I would say one of the biggest challenges besides learning how to create the actual products in a lab , working with , you know , your , your chemists and wanting to make sure that everything is truly organic and natural because something like , um , you go to Sephora and they need a three year shelf life. So our products from the time you open them have six months because it is all natural , organic. So , you know , things like that , that you are going to be pushed out of spaces because you're doing small batch and you're really keeping those ingredients , the highest quality nutrition , basically for your skin. But beyond that , going into it as a business has been a very steep learning curve. You know who to talk to , how to get into various spaces. And then I'd say the biggest hurdle recently has just been a lot of people are asking , I know this is indigenous and I know this. These are sacred ingredients. Is it okay ? I'm not a native person. Can I can I use this product , which is really interesting because you think about if you go to Sephora and you see a Japanese product , you don't ask the question , can I utilize this or Korean or , you know , black owned company , whatever. And that also goes back to the separation that this government has pushed on us as indigenous people , that people are almost a little bit hesitant to interact with the original people of this land. So I have to share the history of the land , and I have to let people know we have been here for 23,000 years , documented. And before the colonies came over , we were a country like every other country in the world. And during the time we were a prosperous country , we were bartering and trading with people from all over the world. And so , yes , you can utilize our products and even yes , you can wear native fashion , you know , so things like that. We're removing these stereotypes and fears that people have.
S1:
S2: A lot of people don't understand genocide , and genocide is different than war. So when you have been targeted historically , your grandparents went to boarding school , your great grandparents went to boarding school , and you have this history that's not that far removed. You're actually not only within the culture picking up on this generational trauma and fear , intense fear , but you also inherit it within your DNA. So just like you inherit your eye color , your height , Fortunately , you inherit this nervous system that is the result of genocide. And so being able to push through those fears , that anxiety that most people would never understand. That has been the biggest struggle in my whole lifetime is being willing to put myself out there. When as a little kid , your grandfather said , don't ever tell anyone you're an Indian girl , you know , let them know you're Mexican. And I never understood what that meant. But what he was saying is , you know , I'm fearful that the government could come and snatch you , just like they snatched me and put me into boarding schools. So that's not even 100 years ago. Mhm.
S1: Mhm.
S3: You know , we have about.
S1: A minute or so left here. You know , we started this conversation with you telling us the story about you and your daughter going to Sephora and having this , you know , just enlightened thought that led to , uh , native beauty. I guess you know.
S2: So within Native Beauty , I'm bringing all of these incredible young people to participate in photo shoots and to bring them give them opportunity to shine as a part of our brand and part of our brand ambassadorship. So we we have a big photo shoot coming up. We do for a year. We do a call to models. Um , the majority of them are not professional models. These are young people with the desire to step out of their comfort zone. Many of them are coming from reservations. Most of us are mixed. You know , we're not full blooded. We're not FBI , full blooded Indian. Just a little inside joke. Um , so it's giving these young people an opportunity to see their faces in a way that they've never thought possible. And my goal is to set a foundation for that next generation to step into beauty , whether they're going to be a model , create a product , go into the beauty industry , thrive and have our faces shine because I feel like we deserve that as the first people on this land.
S1: I've been speaking with Ruth Ann Thorne , founder and CEO of Native Beauty. Ruth Ann , thanks so much for being here today.
S2: My pleasure.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm Andrew Bracken , KPBS. Midday edition airs on KPBS FM weekdays at noon , again at 8 p.m. you can find past episodes at KPBS. Org or wherever you listen. Thanks again for listening. Have a great day.
