About Us
Hola Familia! We are Britta de Coninck Smith and Caleb Auston. We are a traveling couple who have currently been traveling, living and working from our van Falkore for the last year of our lives. When we met 12 years ago while traveling through Austria, we had no idea where our journey would take us. We have both been all over the world teaching yoga, making music, taking pictures and looking for community, culture and place where we could really make a difference for people. Then, suddenly, in the midst of a global pandemic, a job opportunity took us to the jungles of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. Surrounded by the most beautiful nature and amazing people, it was overwhelming to see the strength, beauty and spirit of the both the Kaqchikel and Tz’utujil Mayan tribes that are indigenous to the Lake. Despite living in a third world country with little money and almost none of the comforts of our modern world, these people were joyful, powerful and connected to their home in ways we could only begin to understand. We knew we had found somewhere special and knew that we wanted to contribute to this incredible community and these amazing people. But where to begin? Like so many others, one of the things that had initially caught our attention was the incredible clothing, jewelry and crafts of the Maya community. They were designed for tourists but used the heritage practices and incorporated elements of ancient Maya culture. Enamored with everything we saw, we decided to explore more indigenous tribes and their wears further in Chiapas, Mexico. During that trip we made the choice to start a business that would both bring the unique apparel of these amazing cultures to the world as well as create awareness, economic opportunity and support for these and other indigenous communities around the world. At the heart of it, our core belief simply being that every artist deserves to be appreciated and payed for their work and that there are no separate tribes or people. We are all on this world together and we are all human. Thus Earth Tribe Apparel was born. One World. One People.