A DINÉ WOMAN wields a lightsaber on a black and turquoise T-shirt by Reclaim Designs. She is powerful, elegant, and a little intimidating, not unlike the Indigenous matriarchs she represents. Another design reimagines a woman hunting caribou as a Star Wars rebel scout. Above her is the call to action “Skoden” (Native slang for “let’s go then”) in red with the word translated below in the Star Wars alphabet.
“What George Lucas wanted the Jedi to encompass came from Eastern religions,” says Reclaim Designs cofounder Enoch Endwarrior. “But I’ve come to learn how similar those are to Native understandings.”
Reclaim Designs’s T-shirts, stickers, and cups use Star Wars mythology and its archetypal theme of a hero’s journey to communicate Indigenous lessons, says Endwarrior, who created the brand in 2015 with his brother Manasseh. The Albuquerque duo, who are of the Diné and Onyota’aka (Oneida) Nations, design and print everything in-house. In 2019, a six-month grant from the New Mexico Community Capital’s Native Entrepreneur in Residence Program allowed Endwarrior to work on Reclaim Designs full-time, selling online, at the Albuquerque Rail Yards Market, and Native markets throughout the Southwest.
One of Endwarrior’s first designs was the Jedi Knight seal, incorporating an eagle feather, an eagle staff, a prayer pipe, and mountain stars with “The Force Has Always Been with Our People.” “All those things, no matter what tribe you come from, have significant meanings to how we’re connected to the universe,” he says. “In Star Wars, the force is this energy that connects the universe together.”
Read more: This Native American fashion designer draws inspiration from ranch and reservation life.
Shop Reclaim Designs online at reclaimdesignz.com, or at the seasonal Rail Yards Market in Albuquerque.