Beauty
Awestruck by beauty and grace. Beauty as a means of revolution. Beauty blossoming in all the places we give our hearts to. Recognizing beauty in all that is.
In the past few years, activist-turned-model Quannah Chasinghorse has become a highly sought-after model in the fashion industry, even while she refuses to change parts of her look that are actually markers of her religious and tribal culture, like her hair or her face tattoos, for example. Chasinghorse spent her early childhood in Arizona, Mongolia, and New Mexico before returning to her maternal homelands in Alaska at the age of six. She was raised with her two brothers, hunting, fishing, dog mushing, and living a subsistence lifestyle with their single mother.
Quannah’s connection to the land is sacred for her. She’s Hän Gwich’in and from the Sičangu and Oglala Lakota Tribes, so hunting is a cultural practice. It’s a skill passed down from generation to generation. Her grandma is a hunter, and so is her mom. She wears her heritage proudly through several face tattoos her mom hand-poked. This practice is a rite of passage for Gwich’in girls—a practice Chasinghorse helped revive in her community. Quannah’s ties to her land and people pushed her to speak out long before she was a model.
Though she mostly travels these days for shoots, she has also traveled to Capitol Hill to demand climate action. In 2019, she lobbied Congress to pass a bill that would prevent oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a place for which Quannah is a fourth-generation lad protector. Though the House passed the bill, the Senate never did. The refuge holds special significance to the Gwich’in. They refer to the refuge as Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, or ‘the sacred place where life begins’, due to the porcupine caribou that go there to calve and on which the Gwich’in rely for food.
Instagram: @quannah.rose (linktree for all current projects)
Awestruck by beauty and grace. Beauty as a means of revolution. Beauty blossoming in all the places we give our hearts to. Recognizing beauty in all that is.
In the past few years, activist-turned-model Quannah Chasinghorse has become a highly sought-after model in the fashion industry, even while she refuses to change parts of her look that are actually markers of her religious and tribal culture, like her hair or her face tattoos, for example. Chasinghorse spent her early childhood in Arizona, Mongolia, and New Mexico before returning to her maternal homelands in Alaska at the age of six. She was raised with her two brothers, hunting, fishing, dog mushing, and living a subsistence lifestyle with their single mother.
Quannah’s connection to the land is sacred for her. She’s Hän Gwich’in and from the Sičangu and Oglala Lakota Tribes, so hunting is a cultural practice. It’s a skill passed down from generation to generation. Her grandma is a hunter, and so is her mom. She wears her heritage proudly through several face tattoos her mom hand-poked. This practice is a rite of passage for Gwich’in girls—a practice Chasinghorse helped revive in her community. Quannah’s ties to her land and people pushed her to speak out long before she was a model.
Though she mostly travels these days for shoots, she has also traveled to Capitol Hill to demand climate action. In 2019, she lobbied Congress to pass a bill that would prevent oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a place for which Quannah is a fourth-generation lad protector. Though the House passed the bill, the Senate never did. The refuge holds special significance to the Gwich’in. They refer to the refuge as Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, or ‘the sacred place where life begins’, due to the porcupine caribou that go there to calve and on which the Gwich’in rely for food.
Instagram: @quannah.rose (linktree for all current projects)
Awestruck by beauty and grace. Beauty as a means of revolution. Beauty blossoming in all the places we give our hearts to. Recognizing beauty in all that is.
In the past few years, activist-turned-model Quannah Chasinghorse has become a highly sought-after model in the fashion industry, even while she refuses to change parts of her look that are actually markers of her religious and tribal culture, like her hair or her face tattoos, for example. Chasinghorse spent her early childhood in Arizona, Mongolia, and New Mexico before returning to her maternal homelands in Alaska at the age of six. She was raised with her two brothers, hunting, fishing, dog mushing, and living a subsistence lifestyle with their single mother.
Quannah’s connection to the land is sacred for her. She’s Hän Gwich’in and from the Sičangu and Oglala Lakota Tribes, so hunting is a cultural practice. It’s a skill passed down from generation to generation. Her grandma is a hunter, and so is her mom. She wears her heritage proudly through several face tattoos her mom hand-poked. This practice is a rite of passage for Gwich’in girls—a practice Chasinghorse helped revive in her community. Quannah’s ties to her land and people pushed her to speak out long before she was a model.
Though she mostly travels these days for shoots, she has also traveled to Capitol Hill to demand climate action. In 2019, she lobbied Congress to pass a bill that would prevent oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a place for which Quannah is a fourth-generation lad protector. Though the House passed the bill, the Senate never did. The refuge holds special significance to the Gwich’in. They refer to the refuge as Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, or ‘the sacred place where life begins’, due to the porcupine caribou that go there to calve and on which the Gwich’in rely for food.
Instagram: @quannah.rose (linktree for all current projects)