Quannah Chasinghorse is an indigenous model of Lakota and Hän Gwich’in ancestry. She is known for her Hän Gwich’in tattoos (the traditional face tattoos of women indigenous to Alaska and Canada) and with them she is redefining beauty norms one shoot at a time. Chasinghorse wanted to be a model since she was a little girl living in Mongolia, where her mother was teaching English. She has walked the runway for Chanel, Chloé, and Gucci, and has been featured in Vogue, Elle, and National Geographic. Chasinghorse lives in Los Angeles, but when she needs to get away she goes to her mother’s home in Eagle Village, Alaska. She, her mother, and grandmother are activists, focusing on climate issues and wanting to spread the word on the challenges faced by their tribe as a result of climate change. She was recently the subject of a short documentary called Walking Two Worlds. The film is a deft portrait of a young woman coming into her own while navigating two different realities: her traditional culture and the flashy realm of haut couture. Chasinghorse hopes the film will help people understand not just where she comes from, but how threatened her home and her culture are. Fish camps in Eagle village were quiet as they faced a fourth straight summer of critically low salmon runs, forcing a closure to subsistence harvests. “The salmon are one of our main food sources so we’re facing food insecurity, but also the loss of our culture,” Chasinghorse’s mother says. The shared knowledge behind the use of salmon–catching, filleting, smoking, canning, utilizing every part–is passed down through generations on the riverbanks. Without fishing, that doesn’t happen. Although she does experience climate anxiety, Chasinghorse stays grounded by connecting with her family and expanding Native Youth Outdoors, an organization that her family recently founded to help indigenous kids connect with nature. She uses her fame to spread the word on climate issues and continues to work with the fashion industry on efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.
