LOS ANGELES When artist and clothing designer Lehi ThunderVoice Eagle makes a hat, each detail is carefully considered.

“These are old saddle straps that were repurposed,” he said. “Then, of course, we go through and we add our bits and pieces to it. The stitching — hand-stitched, hand-wrapped. Looking at every piece and how the colors go together.”

ThunderVoice, who identifies as both Diné (Navajo) and Totonac, launched ThunderVoice Hat Company in 2018 with his siblings. They celebrate their Native American ancestry by creating pieces like the iconic Navajo brim hat.

“The nice thing is the old hats are made with quality and so they last forever. We get those, we reshape them, clean them, sometimes distress them more and then bring them back to life,” he said. “We’re trying to showcase how something that is old and discarded can be used again and be beautiful. It’s always beautiful.”

While customers receive authentic pieces from the business, that’s not always the case when shoppers are looking for Native-made goods from other sellers. Across the U.S., the Native arts and crafts industry brings in about $1 billion annually, but imitation goods take away proceeds that provide livelihoods for indigenous people, ThunderVoice said.

“We talk about who gets to profit off our culture and who gets to represent us because the other piece is representation,” he said. “We found a lot of pieces too, were misrepresented and didn’t carry that lineage that we are trying to retain.”

ThunderVoice started an online directory called Buy Native, connecting shoppers to native-made goods and businesses, hoping to celebrate their culture and direct money back to their communities. It even attracted the support of web-hosting company GoDaddy, which set up the database.

Entrepreneurs like Votan Henriquez, owner of the indigenous art collective and clothing brand NSRGNTS, says the database helps shoppers understand who they are buying from and how it sustains Native American communities.

“When we use imagery, we spend all of our money in the community,” he said. “Our kids are the community. There are being fed off of this art. When corporations do things like that, it basically takes out the soul out of the purpose and the meaning of our work.”

His company is known for promoting indigenous philosophy on a wide range of products, including t-shirts, hats, stickers and murals. Henriquez says he hopes to see even more resources like Buy Native as indigenous culture is recognized globally.

“It’s a matter, I think, of time that there is just going to be global recognition for indigenous people. It’s changing. People are identifying as native people much more than ever before and the important thing about that too is that everybody is indigenous to somewhere,” he said.

Buy Native allows anyone to search for a seller by craft, tribal affiliation and state and each listing carefully vetted with the hopes that the directory can also help preserve Native creations for years to come.

“The natives think not just the impact that it has today, but many of the nations have the same idea and philosophy of thinking how it affects the seventh generation, the 10th generation,” he said.