The Rise of the Indigenous Model

Quannah ChasingHorse caught the fashion industry’s attention in an unexpected way.

In 2020, a Calvin Klein scouting director saw photographs of her work to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling. They immediately recruited ChasingHorse, whose heritage is of Hän Gwich’in from Eagle Village, Alaska and Oglala Lakota from Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, for a campaign, changing her life. She went on to grace the covers of Vogue Mexico and Vogue Japan and walk in…