Thoughts Hub

Tag: women

  • Quannah Chasinghorse, a Native American walking between the worlds of fashion and activism

    Growing up, Quannah Chasinghorse, a Native American from Hän Gwich’in and Oglala Lakota descent was discouraged to become a model by the lack of her people’s representation in the fashion industry. But in 2021, at the age of 19, she would make the headlines for walking the MET Gala with a Native American outfit and for showing her distinctive traditional face tattoos. A documentary released in September of last year and titled Walking Two Worlds shows that, besides being a model, Chasinghorse also has an extensive record on Native American rights and climate change activism.

    Chasinghorse was born in 2002 in the Navajo Nation of Arizona. Her mother Jody, also a Native American and climate change activist, is Hän Gwich’in, a First Nation with an estimated population of 310 and located in Alaska and the Yukon territory in Canada. Her father is Oglala Lakota, a Native American people living in North and South Dakota with an estimated population of about 115,000. Raised by her mother and two older brothers, she spent her early childhood between Mongolia, Arizona and New Mexico. At age 6 she moved to Alaska, her maternal homeland, where she was raised in the traditional customs of the Hän Gwich’in. As just a kid she remembers fishing, hunting, chopping wood and being transported by a dog team. After Chasinghorse’s mother got a promotion at her job they all moved to Fairbanks, back in Arizona, where she would spend her teen years. 

    In the city, Chasinghorse became involved in protests against the drilling of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a project approved by president Donald Trump that threatened to drill millions of acres in Alaska. Drawing the connection between Native American Rights and environmental activism came naturally, and shortly after the protests she also served in a Native American local council educating on the ways of life and defending the original land of the Hän Gwich’in. Whilst speaking at climate rallies, she also started working with the Alaska Wilderness League, the lead organization fighting to protect the Arctic Refuge. In a press commentary reminiscing on the reasons for her involvement in climate change activism, she explained: “Our way of life is at risk. Our culture, all of those things that make us who we are, that make our identity.” 

    Chasinghorse and her mother during a trip to Washington to met with different activists and U.S. representatives and discuss the implications of Native American land exploitations”

    Her career as a model started a few years later, in 2020, when she was approached by a casting agent, whilst she was participating in a get-out-the-vote activity – Native Americans have been suffering disenfranchisement for centuries and have one of the lowest voting turnouts in every election –. In her first modeling campaign for Calvin Klein she would appear showing her traditional face tattoos, called Yidįįłtoo, that are linked to a Hän Gwich’in rite of passage and important moments in life. Her appearance, defying the western fashion standards became highly popular and soon she signed her first contract with a big agency. Since then, she has been featured in many of the most important fashion magazines such as Vogue and has posed for brands like Chanel or Ralph Lauren.

    Amongst her most “iconic” moments are the 2021 MET Gala red carpet. Wearing a dress inspired by Native American style and jewelry from the Navajo Nation she made the headlines both for her unique appearance and for defying the theme, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” by wearing non-western fashion elements. Later Chasinghorse would admit on social media that “After a while of trying to fit in in a space where there is a huge lack of indigenous representation, I just started focusing on why I went in the first place”. The relationship of the fashion industry often clashes with climate change activism, Chasinghorse recognizes, but she is also aware that “you have to be at the table where they’re making these decisions”. She now uses her growing influence in social networks to amplify her activism and is often, almost daily, posting about different environmental, social and Native American causes.

    Quannah Chasinghorse at the 2021 MET Gala wearing a dress by Peter Dundas and the jewelry of the former Miss Navajo Nation Jocelyn Billy Upshaw

    Shortly after initiating her career as a model, Chasinghorse was contacted by Maia Wikler, a candidate in a political ecology PhD at the University of Victoria. Wikler, who knew Chasinghorse from her activism work in 2019, pitched her the idea of making a documentary about her career in activism. After a long pandemic with continuous filming pauses, the work Walking Two Worlds was released. The short piece, about half an hour long, features the life of Chasinghorse and aims to highlight her activism journey to engage more people in the Alaskan climate situation. 

    The title of the documentary is also a reference to a tension that Chasinghorse faces in her career and social activism. As one of the first Native American models to be featured by big fashion brands, the first with traditional face tattoos, she feels loneliness and loss of identity from her roots. She would be walking, figuratively, between an “indigenous way of life” and the “modern world”, as phrased by Chasinghorse’s mother in the documentary. After moving to Los Angeles to continue modeling, Chasinghorse felt anxiety attacks from being away from her homeland. In a poem featured in the documentary she expresses her feelings as a walker between two worlds:

    I’m from the beaded moose hide in modern 
    clothes, the smell of sage, the taste of fry bread.

    I’m from the trees, fireweed trails, 
    mushing, and nature walks.

    In the Birch tree I used to climb,
    those long-lost limbs I remember 
    as if they were my own.

    From the hunting, fishing and berry picking trips,
    the potlatches and the legends our elders tell.

    I am from the Hän Gwich’in, Lakota
    and Navajo family.

    Besides these tensions in Chasinghorse life, her career keeps going on swiftly. In the recent March 2024 Oscar’s Gala, she wore again a Native American inspired dress and traditional jewelry. At only 21, she defies western fashion whilst serving as an inspiration for many Indigenous people around the world. Quannah Chasinghorse, model and activist, is an example proving that walking two worlds is possible.  

    At the very recent Oscar’s Gala, Chasinghorse once again attended wearing a dress that honored Native American fashion and jewelry

    About the author

    Dario is a student in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He has previously completed a bachelor in History at the University of Zaragoza and bachelor in Communication at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. During his bachelor years, he also had the chance to study abroad in countries such as the U.S., Italy or Romania, which have made him specially interested in transnational movements and perspectives. He is currently writing a dissertation on the unpublished autobiography of Vaughn Love, one of the African Americans who fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. In his free time, Dario is also a member of the Young Minds Network of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam.

    For more information about the Young Adams Institute, check out https://www.john-adams.nl/.

  • The Story of Susanna M. Salter, the First Woman Mayor of the U.S.

    Very often, when telling the history of women’s suffrage, we focus only on the major achievements, telling the stories of the most recognizable activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Susan B. Anthony. Before the 19th Amendment was ratified by the U.S. Congress and Senate in 1920, women had been fighting for over 150 years to attain the right to vote. By telling the story of lesser-known women who also fought and rallied for the rights to vote, we contribute to an unequivocally more inclusive timeline of general suffrage history.

    It was 1789 when the state of New Jersey became the first to allow any person with property, regardless of sex and race, to vote. The progressive decision would only last for eight years, but it set the beginning of a long century of reforms and activism, the perfection of democracy and the first steps towards the recognition of men and women as equals. The protagonist of today’s article was born on March of 164 years ago in Lamira, a small community in Ohio. Her name was Susanna M. Salter and I encourage everyone to read along to discover how she became the first woman mayor in the history of the United States. 

    A picture of Susanna M. Salter taken around the same year that she was elected as mayor of Argonia.

    Daughter of Quaker parents, she was the descendant of the first English settlers that arrived to the United States with William Penn. After living her youth in Silver Lake and whilst in school, she married Lewis Allison Salter and together with her parents they moved to a little farm in what would, in 1881, become the small city of Argonia in Kansas. Shortly after her marriage, Salter became involved with the recently founded Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). An important player in the Temperance Movement against the consumption of alcohol that would eventually culminate with the 18th Amendment, the WTCU became already by 1890 the largest women’s organization in the world. 

    The rapid growth of the Union in the late 19th century translated into the involvement of the WTCU in other political issues such as those related to prostitution, labor and, most notably, suffrage. Under the direction of Frances Willard, the organization adopted the motto “Do Everything” and, as it got involved more into politics, its role in the eventual passing of the 19th Amendment also became bigger in parallel to other more recognized organizations such as the NWSA or the AWSA.

    In 1887, Kansas — that some years before had been the first state to hold a referendum on women’s suffrage — became also one of the first states to grant women the vote in municipal elections. That same year, Argonia, having been established as a municipality in 1885 and with a population of about 500 people, held its second municipal elections and the first in which women could vote. The previous term had elected Salter’s father as the mayor and her husband as the clerk, which, added to the fact that she was a member of the WTCU made her a quite popular character in the small city of Argonia. 

    Just as it happens every time that progress is made, the news of a woman’s enfranchisement in the upcoming municipal election was met with opposition amongst many men in Argonia. On top of that, the WTCU chapter in the city announced that it would support any candidate who made alcohol and tobacco prohibition a top priority in their political program. A group of men who believed that politics should be reserved for their sex decided to play a trick on the WTCU slate of candidates. As chance had it, the only eligible woman of the WTCU Argonia’s chapter was Salter; the men partaking in the complot copied the slate of the organization but changed the name of the mayor candidate to her first name, Susanna. Thinking that no men would vote a woman as mayor, without the knowledge or consent of Susanna, they printed the ballots and hoped that their little trick would undermine the prestige of the WTCU and demonstrate that women should not play any role in politics. 

    The morning of the election, Salter was contacted by the Republican party once one of its members noticed her name on the ballot. Asked if she would serve if elected, Salter responded affirmatively and after a quick meeting with the representatives of the party received their official support. Together with the support of the Prohibition Party, politically aligned with the WTCU, she ended up receiving two thirds of the total votes. What started as a trick from a group of angry men had ended with the election of Salter, 27 years old at the time, as the first ever woman mayor in the history of the United States. 

    Her election caused a sensation among the newspapers of the whole nation, and during her year as mayor she was visited by many correspondents from other states, making the little city of Argonia into a temporary tourist hot-spot. Even though her term as mayor lasted only for one year, the news of her election crossed borders as she received letters of congratulation from countries such as France, Germany or Italy. 

    The house of Susanna M. Salter in Argonia, today turned into a museum and part of the National Register of Historic Places.

    One of these letters, from Willard, the president of the WTCU, encouraged Salter to write “a note that I can read to audiences, showing the good of woman’s ballot as a temperance weapon and the advantage of women in office”. The following years allowed her to become a speaker in women’s suffrage conventions sharing, at least once, the stage with Susan B. Anthony. 

    Shortly after Salter’s term in office and choosing not to continue a career in politics, the whole family moved to Oklahoma and eventually settled, after her husband’s death in 1915, in Norman, a bigger city where her children could attend university. Little is known about her later years and, although she remained interested in politics for her whole life, she never sought to be re-elected or took any relevant political roles after her one-year mayor term. 

    Susanna M. Salter died in 1961, at age 101, in Norman, Oklahoma, although she was buried in the still today little city of Argonia, the place that made her the first ever woman to be elected as mayor in the United States. 

    Sources

    About the author

    Dario is a student in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He has previously completed a bachelor in History at the University of Zaragoza and bachelor in Communication at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. During his bachelor years, he also had the chance to study abroad in countries such as the U.S., Italy or Romania, which have made him specially interested in transnational movements and perspectives. He is currently writing a dissertation on the unpublished autobiography of Vaughn Love, one of the African Americans who fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. In his free time, Dario is also a member of the Young Minds Network of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam.

    For more information about the Young Adams Institute, check out https://www.john-adams.nl/.