Sitting cross-legged on the floor of her file room, poet Cate Stetson pulls stacks of framed pictures, photo albums, and scrapbooks from cardboard boxes. Flipping through pages, she stops and points to a handwritten note on simple stationery. "Oh, and here's a letter from Anais Nin," she says. "Do you know who she is?"

And there are more letters. And cards. From George Plimpton, and John Updike, and Ezra Pound's daughter, all written many years ago to a young girl poet who pestered them with her questions.

Bernalillo County Democratic Party Chair Cate Stetson continues her search for interesting photographs. She is look-ing especially for photos of her and former President Bill Clinton to use for this article. "Senator, senator, senator, vice president, senator, first lady ...." She sorts through the photographs and letters, pauses, and laughs, pointing to a pretty cream-colored letterhead with Kelly green border. "My staff tossed out a few of these before they realized whom they were from," she smiles, tapping her finger on the name across the top: Mary Elizabeth Gore, who her staff now recognizes as Tipper.

Lawyer Cate Stetson finds the photo that she is looking for: Bill Clinton, American flag, great smile. "I owe so much to him. Not just my life in politics," she says, "But he taught me how to smile for photographs. Early on, the camera would catch me with my mouth halfway open or my tongue sticking out. Terrible photos. But now I know to just keep smiling. It doesn't always work, but people are fooled into thinking I am actually photogenic."

Not that tribal art collector Cate Stetson has much to worry about. Tall, slender, and youthful, she walks through her offices with an assured grace, pausing briefly to point out key features of recently acquired Native American art pieces. "Art is everything," she states matter-of-factly, as if that single idea might explain it all her life, her path, her person. Bold colors, nature, and movement create a warmth and creative power not commonly found in professional offices, while fresh flowers and feathers lend a soft natural contrast. The style of her offices is similar to her own: unique, somehow appropriately con-servative, yet sexually charged.

Catherine Baker Stetson was born in New York City in 1948 to Dr. Chandler Alton Stetson, Jr., and Betty Jean Stetson. "My father was the smartest, most talented man I've ever known. He entered Harvard Medical School at age 17. He was also a musician - played piano, clarinet, violin - everything but drums. But he felt that time required him to choose between medicine and music," she explains. "He chose to go to medical school because he believed that, as a doctor, he could benefit more people. Later, doing his residency at Johns Hopkins, he met and married my mother, who was in graduate school there."

Stetson says that her parents made it clear from the start that she could do an-thing she put her mind to, but that she had specific and enduring obligations to her community and beyond. She was raised in an area just outside New York City that was home to many talented actors such as Helen Hayes, Burgess Meredith, and Henry Jones. Her parents made it clear from the start that she could do anything she put her mind to, but that she had specific and enduring obligations to her community and beyond.

as Liza Minnelli, Eliot Gould, and Zero Mostel played in the local theater, and Stetson played with the children of famous authors, painters, dancers, and musicians.

"It was impossible to grow up NOT thinking that art was everything," Stetson explains. "I did not share in the talent, but I certainly appreciated what everyone around me was doing. I got to see the Beatles the first time they were on the Ed Sullivan Show! I know my way around the Guggenheim and the Cloisters. There are tremendous advan-tages to living in New York City, even though there is very little grass."

In 1966, Stetson entered Vassar College as an Italian major, art history minor. She went to Italy for her junior year abroad and fell in love with the country's language, its arts, and some of its men. "Can you imagine the poor program coordinator, chaperoning a group of 12 and one-half virgins and me around Italy? What a task!" Stetson's inability to con-form completely to the rules and expectations of the school forced her to leave before the end of the year, but she tries to return to Italy twice a year and says she is conforming a little better these days.

Finishing Vassar as an American poetry major with a drama minor (she was in plays with Meryl Streep), Stetson began her writing career in earnest. She earned her master's degree in creative writing from Brown University in 1972 and published her first poems in The Nation. From Rhode Island, she moved to New Mexico in 1973 to enter the Ph.D. program in Native American Studies. Once there, she taught freshman English and continued to publish poems and do poetry readings.

"My poems always were very primal, very sexual," Stetson says. Many would find her poems too strong, too raw, and it took some doing to find an example to include in this article. "But sexuality is so important," she says. "Like death. Like art. It's important to me, so I deal with it." It is the undercurrent of things natural that gives her poems their strength and voice, as evident in her poem, "Preparations," published in Southwestern Poetry and in New Mexico Magazine.

Men sit by fires in the night
along the steep banks of the Rio Grande,
fishing. Fires burn in the eyes
of the fish they are trying to catch.
We stop for a few moments
in the cold dark -
in Taos, the foot-racers pause
in their preparations.
We are all waiting
for the same shadow
that passes quietly
just before dawn.
We know it by the fire
that burns in its eyes,
and we know that dawn is near.

When Stetson was writing her doctoral dissertation, her father - then the Dean of the Medical School at University of Florida - died. "As anyone knows who has lost a parent, this was devastating," she admits. "I was such a problem child, and neither of my parents thought I would amount to much, assuming I even lived through adolescence. I am glad my Dad lived long enough to know that things had turned around for me." She finished her Ph.D., dedicated her dissertation to him, and went on to law school with the intention of becoming a tribal attorney.

Why a tribal attorney? "It is a long story, and one born of ignorance: I knew so little then about law or tribes," she admits. Yet it is a decision that Stetson does not regret.

"Most people today are as ignorant about tribes as I was then," she explains. "They fight with the tribes in a most dishonorable way. Sure, some tribes have casinos; many don't. But if you think a few casinos can undo centuries of neglect and poverty, just come with me and look at some tribal houses. Here, today, in New Mexico, I can show you homes without heat or indoor plumbing. Cinderblock boxes without insulation and with dirt floors, maybe a piece of linoleum rolled out on top to keep the dirt covered. The substandard education and medical care currently available to Native Americans would stun anyone who took the time to learn about them. Yet some people still want to fight about whether tribes have too much. It's disgraceful," Stetson says, "and I'm glad to be on this side of the issue. It's easy for me to sleep at night, and it is a pleasure for me to go to work in the morning."

Stetson received her J.D. in 1981 and joined Ussery & Parrish, PA, an Albuquerque firm specializing in Indian and commercial law. In 1986, she and a friend from law school, Kevin Gover, a Comanche/Pawnee, established a practice together. Joined later by Susan Williams, a Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux, and by Rick West, a Southern Cheyenne, Gover, Stetson, Williams & West, PC, quickly became a pre-eminent tribal law firm, both Indian and woman-owned.

Stetson's administrator, Carol Herrera, who has worked for Stetson since the beginning, describes the early years. "When we first started, we knew nothing, nothing. Cate and Kevin had never run a business before. They had a sort of 'open-the- doors-and-they-will-come' philosophy," she laughs. "And we were so unsophisticated. Everything was typed at first. We had no computers. Later, when we would print invoices from the computer, there would be Cate and Kevin, sitting over the printer, counting letterhead and blank sheets, putting them in order in the paper tray and praying that the bills would print in the right order."

"These were the years before the tribes had money," Herrera explains, "before casinos." She recounts the office's first holiday party. Gover's wife brought in a crockpot of meatballs and other home-made dishes. "Last year," says Herrera, "we had crab and custom-smoked salmon flown in from Alaska, donated by some of Cate's Alaska Native friends."

In 1990, West left to become director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. About that time, Stetson, who intensely disliked politics, was encouraged by Gover, a born political activist, to become involved in politics as a means of increasing their tribal clients' power. I believe there are dozens of ways you can have your cake and eat it, too: eat only part of it ... bake two cakes ... trade for a pie.

In 1991, Gover and Stetson decided to support an unknown, Bill Clinton, for President. "In December 1991, I bought a beautiful beaded gown in Palm Springs," she says. "I told the sales clerk 'I am going to wear this to Bill Clinton's inauguration. ' The clerk asked, 'Bill WHO?'" Stetson laughs.

The world soon came to know Bill Who. Native Americans for Clinton-Gore was run out of The Gover Stetson law offices during the 1992 campaign, and by 1995, Stetson had become a nationally-known fund raiser for Clinton-Gore and Senate Democrats. In a short time, she had gone from despising politics to having lunches and dinners with the President.

In 1997, when Gover was appointed to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs, Stetson started her own law firm, Stetson Law Offices, PC, and a lobbying company, Legi\X Company. Both provide services to tribes and tribal agencies in several states.

Herrera says that Stetson is truly unique. "She is the strongest, most generous woman I know," she says. "She is a philanthropist. She could make double, triple, quadruple what she earns if she would sell out to a larger firm. But she is absolutely committed to her calling; she has to do what is right for Indian Country."

Herrera continues, "Cate's commitment and enthusiasm are rare. She falls in love harder and stronger than anyone I've ever known, whether it be for clients, causes, or men. She brings all facets of herself to the table, brings all of her experiences to bear to find solutions and create fair outcomes.

Stetson admits she likes to have things her way and still doesn't much care for people's rules and limitations. "Why do we always have to choose? I believe there are dozens of ways you can have your cake and eat it, too: eat only part of it ... bake two cakes ... trade for a pie. My Dad may have chosen to make a career out of medicine, but he made music all his life. Life does not have to be an either/or proposition."

It is difficult to label Stetson or to understand how she grew from poet to lawyer to political activist, but it's all very natural to her: sun and moon, Democrats and Republicans, men and women.

"Poetry is quite similar to politics for me," she explains. "Both are inspired by the need to communicate, and both stem from our dreams of what is possible. They both create and are a part of our story - the tale of the tribe."

Suggesting to Stetson that this may be a great example of "thinking outside the box," she retorts, "What is this 'thinking out of the box' stuff? Who says it has to be a box? Maybe it's a sphere. Maybe it's amorphous. Maybe it has no boundaries at all. Anyway, there's a lot of good stuff inside boxes - why let people tell you where to think? The point is, as that horrid but successful man The Donald Trump says, 'If you're going to think, think big.' I try to."

She smiles that smile. "Then again, sometimes I try to think small. And some-times I try not to think at all ... I just go shopping."

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