Not seeing any Native models, I was always confused as to like, are we just not pretty enough? There were not any of us in fashion
When Quannah ChasingHorse says she is “such a dog person,” she means it slightly differently to most. “I run dog teams when I visit home with my mom. You see my mom’s little profile image?” – her mom is on the call with us – “That’s a picture of her out dog mushing! It was something I grew up doing on the daily, it was a part of our way of life. And I always tell people: if you get a chance to run a dog team, do it! It is so much fun, and it will change your life.”
Born in Tuba City, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, Quannah says she “kind of grew up everywhere.” She’s Hän Gwich’in and Oglala Lakota and she spent several years of her childhood in Mongolia, where her mom was teaching English in a school, before returning with her mom and siblings to Kenny Lake, Alaska. It’s a rural community and dog mushing wasn’t just for fun. Like generations before them, Quannah’s family lived off the land, hunting and fishing to sustain themselves.
It might not be the origin story you expect for a model who has fronted campaigns for Chanel, Stella McCartney and Chloé, walked the red carpet at the Met Gala and the Oscars, become a Victoria’s Secret Angel, and even starred in Natalie Portman’s directorial debut music video (for the track Haute Saison by Rob & Jack Lahana). But that’s an expectation Quannah has set out to change. As she puts it, with signature clarity, people like her “deserve to be in these spaces”.
It was perhaps fitting, if improbable, that Quannah caught her first glimpse of the fashion industry while in Mongolia. Living in a rural indigenous community in the mountains, her family travelled to the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, for supplies. They would stay at a hotel and watch TV, and, because her mom wasn’t fluent in the language, she chose a channel playing music: a 24-hour fashion channel screening runways. “I remember seeing that and being so in awe of it, falling in love with it,” Quannah says. “And ever since then, I’m posing in literally every photo!”
Dazzled as she was, it was difficult for Quannah to imagine herself on those runways. “Since I was three, I dreamed of becoming a model, not thinking it was going to be a reality for me,” she says. “Not seeing any Native models, I was always confused as to like, are we just not pretty enough? There weren’t any of us in fashion.”
In fact, she recently met an older, non-Native model who said her agency had proposed marketing her as indigenous because of her complexion and long hair. “Because to them it’s ‘exotic’. But that’s what’s harmful, you know?” Quannah says. “They find people that fit their narrative, the stereotype they want to portray.” Whereas, by casting actual indigenous people, “We’re going to take up that space as who we are as people, not the stereotype.”
For Quannah, that means bringing her work as an advocate for her community and the environment into every space she enters, including the most rarefied and influential. Before she walked the most exclusive red carpets and runways, as a teen Quannah travelled across the country talking to members of Congress and lobbying in Washington, DC, as a member of the Gwich’in Youth Council.
As a fourth-generation land protector, Quannah is following in the footsteps of her mother, aunts and other elders in her work to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “I grew up in the movement,” Quannah says, but “I wasn’t like, ‘Wow, I’m inspired, I want to do it.’ It was more like, I was seeing how it was affecting my people, my family. I started to notice the climate catastrophes every single year.” Hunting sites they had returned to since she was a child were suddenly inaccessible, or simply not there. “It started to get scary, because it changed so drastically,” she says.
These changes in the environment are an immediate, existential threat to indigenous communities. “A lot of our people still greatly depend on our way of life, and that was exactly how I was raised,” Quannah says. “The closest grocery store was over an hour away. And, even then, everything is expensive because shipping things to rural Alaska is expensive and really hard – it’s a harsh environment. Not every village even has a store, and if they do, it’s literally $15 for a bag of chips, $20 for a carton of milk. People in our communities don’t have that kind of money.”
The beam of Quannah’s activism spreads wider than indigenous rights in North America. She has consistently spoken out on social media about the “genocide and ecocide” in Gaza, and more recently about conflict in Sudan and the Congo. “It’s absolutely heartbreaking to know and see indigenous people suffer at the hands of corporate greed,” she says of the latter. “Yet people in America are getting ready and excited to buy the new iPhone, when we know where that’s coming from and who is being affected by that. You don’t need a new phone every year!”
As a working model, does she ever worry that being so outspoken might make her unpalatable to brands? “Sometimes,” she admits, “but honestly, if they don’t want to work with me because of what I believe in, they’re not worth it – not worth me sacrificing my legitimacy in my work as an advocate. I’m not gonna push aside my morals and my values for a money job. If a client doesn’t want to work with me – it’s your loss, dude! This is who I am and what I do.”
Undoubtedly the most striking example of Quannah’s dedication to her culture are her traditional stick-and-poke face tattoos, called Yidiiltoo. The days when models were expected to be a completely blank canvas may have passed, but Quannah is still quite singular in bringing her culture to every image she creates, whatever the creative direction. And since her modelling debut in 2020, among a cast of young activists for CK One, her tattoos have continued to expand and develop.
“Each tattoo is a rite of passage – you earn them,” Quannah explains. “The first one I got was the one line down my chin when I was 14 years old, by my mom, and that is a universally known one, across many different cultures, of reaching womanhood and being able to bring life into this world. As you grow older and meet different stages in life, you can get one that resembles your marriage, childbirth, people passing in your family. There’s so many different reasons and each marking holds a different place and power in someone’s life.”
Quannah explains that her Yidiiltoo are not only personal, but political. Native American cultural and religious practices, including tattooing, were banned in America for almost 100 years – astonishingly until 1978. “The whole country had freedom of religion, but Native Americans didn’t. Our people were literally killed or imprisoned for getting traditional markings, doing any ceremonies, even burning sage,” Quannah explains. Now, younger generations are defiantly reclaiming parts of their culture that had almost been erased. “To move past and heal from those generational traumas, being able to do these markings, it’s a huge part of finding liberation.”
Though religious bans seem a relic of a bygone era, indigenous communities continue to face threats. While many are environmental, from oil pipelines and mining to the effects of climate breakdown, others are less obvious. Because commercial fishing has so depleted fish stocks, some communities are banned from fishing, threatening their way of life. Fossil fuel corporations bring “man camps” of non-Native workers to rural areas, which Quannah says brings violence, “and we have the highest rates of Native women going missing or found murdered because of that.” This epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people is an issue that Quannah’s friend, the actor D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, recently protested against when he was nominated for an Emmy, attending the ceremony with a red handprint painted across his mouth.
Sadly, there is also racism and ignorance to contend with. Becoming a celebrated model has not insulated Quannah from this, and she has been asked why she would “ruin” her face with tattoos. It’s one reason she’s so dedicated to bringing visibility to her culture, and why she feels joy at the growing community of indigenous people in fashion. Quannah has consistently supported Native designers, on the catwalk and in her street style. At a point where she could wear any designer in the world to the Oscars, she hit the best-dressed lists in Red Berry Woman, the brand of indigenous designer Norma Baker-Flying Horse. This past season she walked for K Lookinghorse at New York Fashion Week among a cast of Native models, with Native make-up artists working backstage. “When you have opportunity, you give opportunity to your people,” Quannah says. “If one of us is succeeding, then many of us are. So that’s something that I’m very excited about seeing more of.”
And it seems certain that we will. The past few years have seen an explosion of Native talent breaking through across the creative industries, in ways that show “Native people being celebrated rather than stereotyped, or culturally appropriated,” Quannah says. Her highlights include Erica Tremblay’s debut feature film Fancy Dance, starring Lily Gladstone; the career of Sports Illustrated model, pageant winner and activist Ashley Callingbull; and, of course, Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi’s acclaimed comedy-drama series Reservation Dogs. (You can spot Quannah in an episode of season three.)
“I always recommend Reservation Dogs if people aren’t familiar with Native communities,” Quannah says. “If you’re not familiar with Native humour, and Native trauma to Native joy – it has all three. It really plays into, not just the representation in the stories back at home, but also how people see us; they joke about it. It’s super funny to be able to be light hearted enough to address a lot of past mistakes in film – and in film today. I love it!”
Positive but nuanced and realistic representation is absolutely key, Quannah says, because the stakes are so high. “Indigenous youth in North America have the highest rates of suicide over any other ethnic group in the country,” she explains. “That statistic really shows that Native kids really struggle with hopelessness. As we’re starting to see these things changing and see more of us, that number is going to slowly dwindle, because we’re giving hope to our youth and it’s helping them see that they can have a future.”
Progress can seem inevitable once it happens, but what Quannah has achieved in fashion is remarkable. There was no guarantee that a model with facial tattoos could dictate that they must never be covered up, and still find work with the most exclusive luxury brands. Nor that her principled and outspoken activism would be embraced. It’s a testament to her conviction, tenacity and grace that she has carved out that space for herself – and, she hopes, for others too.
“Modelling makes it about you, but I have the power to really use that platform to not make it about me,” Quannah says. “It’s about the movement, it’s about my people, it’s about our communities. It’s about the seven generations before and after. To be able to think in that way, and work and move in that way, that is what gives me hope. Seeing young indigenous kids be inspired and hopeful? It’s a beautiful thing.”
Hair and make-up: Homar Safar. Set Design: Jeremy Reminitz represented by Spencer Vrooman. Casting director: Christopher Michael. Photography assistant: Milan Aguirre. Styling assistant: Paget Millard. Production: Connect the Dots. Executive producer: Wes Olson