Today we’d like to introduce you to Cheyenne Gordon.
Hi Cheyenne, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was born in Southern California, but soon after my family moved to D.C., then Berlin, then to my tribe’s reservation. I come from a family of ten (yes, all from the same parents). I am a member of The Hualapai Tribe located at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. When I was nine years old my house burned down; which led my family to move off the reservation.
My mother is a talented artist who is very skilled with her hands and story-telling abilities. She and my grandmother taught me how to tap into my inner artist through beading, sewing, photography, painting, and crafting things out of random resources you could find around the house or in nature. I was cast in my first commercial at eight and fell in love with being on set creating. I took my first photography class at 12 and started joining my mother on her photoshoots, where she was photographing indigenous models for commercial calendars. She has always been a crusader for Native American representation in the arts and media. I am a very visual person, and I love to learn by observing and then diving right into practicing the action. This is how I also learned Photoshop. Watching my mother edit and then practiced on random images to see what I could do with them. At 13, I started putting around on the family video recorder. I would write little shorts and cast my siblings as the characters. Thankfully, they always obliged and never argued with my directions.
I do want to mention that I was raised very religious in Mormonism. I believe that this religion is great at colonizing indigenous people and it conditioned us to strip ourselves of our native culture and had us focus on a falsified pilgrim-settler narrative instead. Growing up as an indigenous Mormon, I felt extremely misplaced. I faced a lot of racism, homophobia, animosity, sexism, repression, and shaming. All the while being served the promise of becoming fair-skinned in the afterlife… as if that should be one of my goals in life… to be more white. In my personal experience, it was a place for young girls to be groomed for young marriage and motherhood. In the more darker moments, groomed to be easily preyed upon by males who were taught it was ok to prey on females, as they were viewed as second-class citizens and put on earth for the mere purpose to procreate with man. All of this indoctrination and traumatizing experiences with the church led me to drop my personal artistic dreams and the ways of my Hualapai culture and switch my focus to finding a white man to support his dreams and start a family with.
At 18, I had my first professional photoshoot as a model for a jewelry company. My mom accompanied me to help guide me through it and supervise. I was gifted one image or better known as a tear-sheet from the photographer. I was elated, but once I showed my then-boyfriend the image, I was met with abusive critique. All because I wore a strapless dress and the photo showed my bare shoulders. There was zero nudity involved but yet I was shamed as if there was. My aspirations of creating in the modeling and film industry were becoming increasingly difficult and contradictory to the mormon beliefs. At one point, I was accused of doing porn because I had posed in a bikini and heaven forbid my midriff show… All of this hostility towards women’s bodies was very damaging for my mental health and to my form of artistic expression. From ages 19 to 21, I volunteered as Sunday school teacher. I eventually married at 22 but divorced at 24. I am very thankful for that relationship because it helped pull me out of mormonism and pull the wool off of my eyes to all of the hypocrisy, lies, and harm the church and its leaders have been doing to people for almost two centuries now, including massacring the Paiute tribe in Utah in 1857.
Through all these hardships, I decided to go to college for Agriculture and Business. I first tried going for Fashion Design, but at that time, my classes were teaching to do fast fashion and to aim to be a large conglomerate. It seemed soul-crushing to contribute to the earth’s pollution via fast fashion nor is it sustainable. So I had a real sit down with myself and thought back to when I felt most happy and at peace. It was when I lived on my Reservation, reviving a forgotten garden as a child for the elementary school. My family was extremely poor growing up, and unfortunately there were times when there wasn’t enough food in the house to feed all of us kiddos. The nearest grocery store from my Reservation is an hour drive, about 50 miles away from our little town of Peach Springs. A lot of people don’t have cars or can’t afford gas money so getting proper food is not always so easy out there in the middle of nowhere. So, it dawned on me that I needed to start a farm on my Rez. To help out my tribal community and provide healthy and local food in hopes that no one would have to go hungry again. Now that I am finished with school, I am in the process of properly creating a nonprofit farm called Walapai Roots. As I hope this farm will allow myself, my family, and other tribal members a chance to get back to their cultural roots and live a more sustainable way of life.
Simultaneously, I have been persevering in my artistic endeavors. I finally moved to Los Angeles, California. For the first few years, I focused mainly on modeling – worked on test shoots with reputable photographers, signed with an agency, worked with big brands such as RVCA, Toyota, Disney, Hot Topic, Urban Decay Cosmetics, Surf Rider, Sephora, Walmart, and Starbucks to name a few. In 2018, I finally decided to pick up a professional camera and start shooting and collaborating with models and actors. Now I can proudly say I’m a professional photographer and have had many clients and have been using my photography abilities to try and help build up portfolios and create headshots for other indigenous people who are wanting to break into the industry. Just like my mother, I too am passionate about increasing indigenous representation and helping to share our stories.
In 2020, I was cast as the female lead in the film Sooyii, which I was nominated for Best Actress at the American Indian Film Festival. I starred alongside Stormi Kipp (who went on to have a leading role in the film Prey). Although the movie has yet to officially be released, Sooyii takes place in the 1700s on the Blackfeet Reservation. The entire movie is spoken in the Blackfeet language with English subtitles. This accomplishment was a huge milestone for me, and I am proud that more movies and shows are trying to incorporate tribal language to help prevent them from dying out. Someday, I hope to create something using the Hualapai language.
This past year, I have been mentoring some aspiring indigenous models/actors to help them navigate through this arduous industry in a safe, efficient, and successful manner. When I was first starting out, I did not have the money or resources to kickstart my career. There was no Instagram or TikTok yet to utilize. I dealt with a lot of unsafe work conditions, assault from predatory men, and being extremely underpaid. My first big-name brand job was for Nike. I was scouted at my college. Casting wanted indigenous athletes for the release of their new “Native” N7 shoe… The usage was huge as it was a nationwide marketing campaign, and my face was put on a billboard in various states. We worked a 16-hour day, and we only got paid a very pitiful $200. I am very ashamed of Nike and the casting company who took advantage of young Native American college students like that. I now know how to properly read and negotiate contracts, and I make sure to pay attention to not only the rate of a job but also the usage. I want the world to know we as indigenous people are far more than the stereotype that has been forced upon us. I want to help show the truth, give insights, and show just how resilient, artistic, and sustainable we have been and how we can be even better.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It was truly difficult trying to be a short, brown-skinned model in a very conservative and racist state, where they primarily casted only tall white people for modeling jobs. I compare it to salmon trying to swim upriver. There were a lot of highs and lows and sometimes felt impossible to stay motivated and persevere; but I refused to give up because my intuition has always told me there is a higher purpose for all of my hard work.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am an agency model. I work for fashion, beauty, and commercial brands. You can find me in Sephora stores, and I was recently in a Times Square ad for Schutz shoes.
I am an actress – keep a look out for the release of Sooyii and see me on tv in commercials for Nature Valley & Toyota.
I am a photographer and mainly shoot Editorial, Fashion, Portraits, and Headshots.
I am proud of every shoot I am a part of. With my representation in art and media, I strive to give hope to other indigenous people out there to follow their dreams and do good for their communities.
I think what sets me apart from others is that I care about the people I work with. I care about my communities. Sure I am detail-oriented and love to take artistic risks, but when you are vulnerable and let people know you care about them, they are able to drop their guard and let their inner artist shine through. Which makes for magical art in the end.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
Creating short films with my siblings. There were no editing apps and I shot them all on a VHS recorder. I had to cut exactly where I needed it to end and if we ever messed up, we just rewound to record over it as the film was limited.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.CheyenneGordon.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/CheyGordon
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheyennegordon/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@cheygordon
Image Credits
Red dress image and RVCA campaign shot by Natasha Wilson American Indian Film Festival – Nominee image CNN Article by Harmeet Kaur Me with blonde hair is a shoe campaign image I modeled and photographed. All the rest are family photos.
