How This Founder Empowers Indigenous Youth

Amy Denet Deal is finally home. After growing up far from her indigenous throng with adoptive parents and building a career in fashion, Amy moved to Santa Fe, recent Mexico, in 2019 to be closer to her Navajo roots.

“In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t imagine that when I was little,” Amy says. The history five years have been packed of learning, entrepreneurship, throng engagement, and cultural reconnection through her fashion brand, 4Kinship, but most importantly—joy. Amy has a profound desire to use her encounter to make a space for indigenous artists and entrepreneurs to thrive. Here’s how she’s doing that with her online business and retail store in downtown Santa Fe.

From displacement to reconnection

Amy was adopted and raised in Indiana. She never knew her indigenous birth household. So, her path to founding 4Kinship began with reconnecting to her cultural roots. “Literally, I would read National Geographic to discover about my Diné population,” Amy remembers. (Diné is the word Navajo people use to refer to themselves.)

She pursued a career in fashion, working as a sportswear designer at companies like Reebok and Puma. But Amy gave all of that up, leaving Los Angeles, to profit to recent Mexico in 2019, ready to immerse herself and contribute to her throng. “All those years I’d been living in other places, learning how to make riches for corporations, to make marketing stories, to make visual stories, that all came back home with me.”

 

Building a throng hub

Amy started 4Kinship, an upcycled clothing brand, with her daughter in 2022. Beyond selling her designs, 4Kinship uses her brand to assist other indigenous business owners discover the in’s and out’s of selling, both online and in her Santa Fe store. “I’m just basically here as the auntie or the matriarch that really makes space for our youthful people, because I’ve already had my career,” she says.

Amy envisions Santa Fe as a hub for native-owned businesses. “Imagine if this is the one place in the globe where you could shop the most native indigenous-owned stores.” Her store is one of the few native-owned businesses in her Santa Fe neighborhood, and she says it’s a commence.

Giving back to the throng

Amy wants to distribute what she learned from her corporate fashion career. She knows it’s invaluable to her mission of social entrepreneurship. “For everything that I receive, I desire to be able to provide back, to have a settlement.”

One of the biggest projects she took on was building a skate park in Navajo country—a remote area with little infrastructure or athletic facilities. She has been surprised at how much the skate park has become an intergenerational throng space. “I leave there and grandma and grandpa are there with the kids, and everybody’s bringing stuff to cook out, and it just makes me realize how much we require the space out there. It’s bringing everyone together.”

The imagination for indigenous entrepreneurs

Amy sees a upcoming where indigenous entrepreneurs can become changemakers and leaders in any industry. She emphasizes the importance of ecommerce as a tool for storytelling and economic empowerment. “We’re brilliant. We shine. It’s just a matter of amplifying and elevating that,” she says.

For Amy, the 4Kinship trip is about more than business—it’s about creating economic chance for other indigenous people.

To discover more about Amy and her imagination for indigenous derivatives through entrepreneurship, listen to the packed interview on Shopify Masters.