"The Demise of Tonto: Or Hollywood Meets the Sioux Nation"

Cathy Smith, Emmy award winning costume designer, speaks about authenticity in film making: the art of presenting history as it was, not as Hollywood wishes it was. Her costumes for movies such as "Dances With Wolves" and "Son of the Morning Star" set a new standard for Hollywood to live up to and educated millions of viewers.

Cathy takes us through a "day in the life" of movie making, from the costumers point of view. Showing over 200 slides shot on location during the filming of "Dances with Wolves" and other Westerns we get an inside look at what it takes to make an epic film. We also learn what the ornamentation on Native clothing signifies, how costumes and sets are made to look authentic in very little time, and all about stunts, blood, and gunshot wounds. Cathy will answer all your questions about period films

About the Speaker:

Cathy Smith; nationally known living history interpreter, historian and specialist in the clothing and material culture of the North American Plains Indians, won an Emmy in 1991 for her costume design for "Son Of The Morning Star," an ABC Television mini-series about General Custer and the Sioux Indians. In 1989, she was asked to participate in recreating a highly accurate image of the Native American for Kevin Costner's "Dances With Wolves." Cathy also has done remarkable work for other films, such as "Miracle In The Wilderness," "Silent Tongue," "On Deadly Ground," "Geronimo," "Wild Bill" and "Buffalo Girls," just to name a few.

Cathy was raised on a cattle ranch in Western South Dakota between the Pine Ridge Reservation and the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. Her grandfather homesteaded there and up until 1946, raised remount horses for the cavalry at Fort Mead. Cathy's great-grandmother was an Assiniboin medicine woman. She was taken as a daughter by one of the last traditional Lakota medicine men. He taught her Lakota myths and legends from which the tribes' art and designs evolved, trained her in his spiritual ways, and since then she has participated in annual sacred ceremonies. All this helped form a lifelong passion and kinship with the spirit of the Native American.

When her interest seriously turned to material culture, Cathy sought out Mrs. Bertha Hump, one of the last of the Double Woman Dreamers of the Miniconjou and a traditional plains quill worker. She was taught that all of the myths and legends learned at her adopted father's knee would be the basis of plains art and design and that there was a very holy spiritual aspect to recreating Indian art. Cathy has traveled to museums and viewed private collections all over the world to study construction and tribal design. She has been to Europe to study bead manufacturing and was lucky enough to find, in one Venetian factory, over 400 kilos of the original "greasy" colors that are no longer made.

Cathy's extensive knowledge of the traditional tools and techniques of production and the purpose and position of the art within the respective culture is derived from a lifetime of extensive research. Due to her knowledge and skill, she is a well known restorer of artifacts for museums and collectors. Her own traditional work can be seen in galleries and collections across the country.

Cathy's Web Page <<click here>>

FUTURE SHOW DATES
March 20-21, 2010	•	March 19-20, 2011	•	March 17-18, 2012

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